Indian History is one fascinating journey in education, inspiration and amazing academic entertainment. This page discusses the Indian History. It attempts to study Indian History from a peace perspective. It loves to highlight and record events when Indians lived in fraternity (and sorority), peace and harmony with each other and the nature. It narrates the history of Indians who practised and promoted humanism, tolerance and respect for human beings and nature. Join our noble and fascinating debates by posting your articles, research papers, podcasts and video clips on such subjects on this site. We start the debate by posting a basic chronology of the major historical events in India from the Early Modern Times on wards. The discussions on this site, however, need not be restricted to particular eras of the History of the Indian Subcontinent.
CHRONOLOGY OF EUROPEAN COLONIALISM
PRE ENGLISH EUROPEANS
1510-1961 Portuguese in India.
20 May, 1498 Vasco de Gama’s first voyage from Europe to India and back (to 1499).
1503 Kingdom of Cochin is taken over by the Portuguese creating the first European settlement in India.
1508 The Christian-Islamic power struggle in Europe and the Middle East. Spills over into the Indian Ocean as Battle of Chaul during the Portuguese-Mamluk War.
3 FEBRUARY 1508 The Battle of Diu was a naval battle fought on 3 February 1509 in the Arabian Sea, in the port of Diu, India, between the Portuguese Empire and a joint fleet of the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan of Gujarat, the Mamlûk Burji Sultanate of Egypt, the Zamorin of Calicut with support of the Republic of Venice. The Portugese won.
1510 Portuguese Catholics conquer Goa to serve as capital of their Asian maritime empire, beginning conquest and exploitation of India by Europeans.
1522 Portuguese land on the Coromandel Coast.
1542 Portuguese Jesuit priest Francis Xavier (1506-1552), most successful Catholic missionary, lands in Goa. First to train and employ native clergy in conversion efforts, he brings Christianity to India, Malay Archipelago and Japan.
1650 Robert de Nobili (1577-1656), Portuguese Jesuit missionary noted for fervor and intolerance, arrives in Madurai, declares himself a Brahmin, dresses like a Hindu monk and composes Veda-like scripture extolling Jesus.
1725 Jesuit Father Hanxleden compiles first Sanskrit grammar in a European language.
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FRANCE
1660 Frenchman Francois Bernier reports India’s peasantry is living in misery under Mughal rule.
1759-1954 French India
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DANES
20 Nov 1696-1869 Danish India
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ENGLISH COLONIALISM IN INDIA
30 Nov 1612- 1947 The English in India.
31 December 1600 East India company is formed in England. Gets exclusive trading rights with India. It was styled The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies.
1611 East India Company established a factory in Masulipatnam on the Eastern coast of India.
1612 East India Company gets the grant of the rights to establish a factory in Surat by the Mughal emperor Jahangir.
1613-14 British East India Company sets up trading post at Surat.
1614-18 Mughals grant Britain right to trade and establish factories in exchange for English navy’s protection of the Mughal Empire, which faces Portuguese sea power.
1640 East India Company established a factory in Madras after a grant of right by the ruler of Vijayanagara.
1668 East India Company was given a lease of Bombay Island. Bombay was a former Portuguese outpost gifted to England as dowry in the marriage of Catherine of Braganza to Charles II.
End 1680s East India Company established a presence on the eastern coast as well; far up that coast, in the Ganges river delta, a factory was set up in Calcutta.
March-October 1721 Attingal Uprising against the East India Company. It refers to the massacre of 140 East India Company soldiers by native Indians and the following siege of Fort Anjengo. The Attingal Outbreak is often regarded as the first organized revolt against British authority in Malabar, Cochin and Travancore.
13-14 November 1721 Madras Cyclone.
1751 Robert Clive, age 26, seizes Arcot in modern Tamil Nadu as French and British fight for control of South India.
1756 The Black Hole of Madras.
23 June 1757 The Battle of Plassey.
1757- 1858 East India Company Rule in India.
1760 Battle at Wandewash, British troops beat French
22 October 1764 Battle of Buxar. British victory against allied Mughal, Bengal and Oudh forces.
16 August 1765 Treaty of Allahabad. East India Company was granted the diwani, or the right to collect revenue, in Bengal and Bihar and Orrissa by the Mughal King Shah Alam II.
12 August 1765- 1947 The practice of Subsidiary Aliiances with the Princely States.
By 1772 The East India Company needed British government loans to stay afloat, and there was fear in London that the Company’s corrupt practices could soon seep into British business and public life.
1769-70 Bengal Famine. Between seven and ten million people—or between a quarter and third of the presidency’s population—may have died.
1772 Under Warren Hastings, the East India Company took over revenue collection directly in the Bengal Presidency (then Bengal and Bihar), establishing a Board of Revenue with offices in Calcutta and Patna, and moving the pre-existing Mughal revenue records from Murshidabad to Calcutta.
1773 Regulating Act of 1773 Presidencies of Fort William (Bengal) has precedence over those of Fort St. George (Madras) and Bombay. East India Company established a capital in Calcutta Warren Hastings appointed as first Governor-General of India.
British East India Company obtains monopoly on the production and sale of opium in Bengal.
1774 With a view to preventing corruption—Company district collectors, who were then responsible for revenue collection for an entire district, were replaced with provincial councils at Patna, Murshidabad, and Calcutta, and with Indian collectors working within each district. The title, “collector,” reflected the centrality of land revenue collection to government in India: it was the government’s primary function and it molded the institutions and patterns of administration.
1784 Judge and linguist Sir William Jones founds Calcutta’s Royal Asiatic Society. First such scholastic institution.
Pitts India Act. It established a Board of Control in England both to supervise the East India Company’s affairs and to prevent the Company’s shareholders from interfering in the governance of India.
1786 District collectors in Bengal were made responsible for settling the revenue and collecting it.
Sir William Jones uses the Rig Veda term Aryan (“noble”) to name the parent language (now termed Indo-European) of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Germanic tongues.
1787-1795 British Parliament impeaches Warren Hastings, Governor General of Bengal (1774-85) for misconduct.
1793 Permanent Settlement of Lord Cornwallis. It was the first socio-economic regulation in colonial India. By the terms of the settlement Rajas and Taluqdars were recognized as Zamindars and they were asked to collect the rent from the peasants and pay revenue to the Company. It was named permanent because it fixed the land tax in perpetuity in return for landed property rights for zamindars; it simultaneously defined the nature of land ownership in the presidency, and gave individuals and families separate property rights in occupied land. Since the revenue was fixed in perpetuity, it was fixed at a high level, which in Bengal amounted to £3 million at 1789-90 prices.
In southern India, Thomas Munro, who would later become Governor of Madras, promoted the ryotwari system or the Munro system, in which the government settled land-revenue directly with the peasant farmers, or ryots.
1795 Asaf Jah II the Nizam of Hyderabad was defeated at the Battle of Kharda, after the Maratha-Mysore War.
1801 East India Company occupies North-Western Provinces (comprising Rohilkhand, Gorakhpur, and the Doab). Rohilkhand of Lower Doab was annexed.
1803 East India Company occupies Delhi.
Rohilkhand of Upper Doab annexed.
Nonresistance from the Emperor Nawab of Bhawalpur accepts borders with British India.
March 1799-July 1805 Polygar War or Palaiyakkarar Wars between East India Company armies and the former Tirunelveli Kingdom in Tamil Nadu.
10 July 1806 Vellore Uprising against the English in Tamil Nadu.
1813 The Charter Act. British Parliament renewed the Company’s charter but terminated its monopoly except with regard to tea and trade with China, opening India both to private investment and missionaries.
1820 First Indian immigrants arrive in the US.
1825 First massive immigration of Indian workers from Madras is to Reunion and Mauritius. This immigrant Hindu community builds their first temple in 1854.
1828 East India Company occupies Assam, Ahom Kingdom.
1833 Slavery is abolished in British Commonwealth countries, giving impetus to abolitionists in United States.
Charter Act.
1835 Civil service jobs in India are opened to Indians.
Macaulay’s Minute furthers Western education in India. English is made official government and court language.
Mauritius receives 19,000 immigrant indentured laborers from India. Last ship carrying workers arrives in 1922.
1837 Britain formalizes emigration of Indian indentured laborers to supply cheap labor under a system more morally acceptable to British Christian society than slavery, illegal in the British Empire since 1833.
1837 Kali-worshiping Thugs are suppressed by British.
1838 British Guyana receives its first 250 Indian laborers.
1839 First Anglo-Afghan War
1843 East India Company conquered and annexed Sindh, to the south of the Punjab, in a move which many British people regarded as cynical and ignoble.This did not gain the British any respect in the Punjab, and increased suspicions of British motives.
1845 Trinidad receives its first 197 Indian immigrant laborers.
1849-56 East India Company occupies Punjab and KPK areas.
1850 First English translation of the Rig Veda by H.H. Wilson, first holder of Oxford’s Boden Chair, founded “to promote the translation of the Scriptures into English, so as to enable his countrymen to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian religion.”
1851 Sir M. Monier-Williams (1819-99) publishes English-Sanskrit Dictionary. His completed Sanskrit-English Dictionary is released in 1899 after three decades of work.
1853 The British Started Post Service.
Max Muller (1823-1900), German Christian philologist and Orientalist, advocates the term Aryan to name a hypothetical primitive people of Central Asia, the common ancestors of Hindus, Persians and Greeks. Muller speculates that this “Aryan race” divided and marched west to Europe and east to India and China around 1500 bce. Their language, Muller contends, developed into Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, etc., and all ancient civilizations descended from this Aryan race.
16 April 1853 First Railway estalblished between Bombay and Thane.
1854 Berar annexed by East India Company
30 June 1855 Santhal Uprising or Santhal Hool, was a native rebellion in present-day Jharkhand, in eastern India against both the British colonial authority and zamindari system by the Santhal people.
25 July 1856 Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act, 1856
1856 Catholic missionary Bishop Caldwell coins the term Dravidian to refer to South Indian Caucasian peoples.
East India company occupies Awadh.
10 May 1857 War of Independence breaks out.
1857 First three Universities Established i.e. of Mumbai, University of Madras and University of Calcutta.
1858 India has 200 miles of railroad track. By 1869 5,000 miles of steel track have been completed by British railroad companies. In 1900, total track is 25,000 miles, and by World War I, 35,000 miles. By 1970, at 62,136 miles, it had become the world’s greatest train system. Unfortunately, this development depleted India’s forest lands.
2nd August 1858 Government of India Act.
1858-67 Singapore under British Indian rule.
1858- 1937 Aden under British Indian rule.
1858-1937 Lower Burma under British Indian rule.
1860 S.S. Truro and S.S. Belvedere dock in Durban, S. Africa, carrying first indentured servants (from Madras and Calcutta) to work sugar plantations. With contracts of five years and up, thousands emigrate over next 51 years.
1861 Indian Councils Act.
1875 Deccan Riots. In May and June 1875, peasants of Maharashtra in some parts of Pune, Satara and Ahmednagar districts revolted against increasing agrarian distress. The Deccan Riots of 1875 targeted conditions of debt peonage (Kamiuti) to moneylenders. The riot’s specific purpose was to obtain and destroy the bonds, decrees, and other documents in the possession of the moneylenders.
1876-1900 Max Muller, pioneer of comparative religion as a scholarly discipline, publishes 50-volume Sacred Books of the East, English translations of Indian-Oriental scriptures.
1 January 1877 Called the “Proclamation Durbar”, the Durbar of 1877, for which the organization was undertaken by Thomas Henry Thornton, was held beginning on 1 January 1877 to proclaim Queen Victoria as Empress of India by the British. The 1877 Durbar was largely an official event and not a popular occasion with mass participation like later durbars in 1903 and 1911. It was attended by the 1st Earl of Lytton— Viceroy of India, maharajas, nawabs and intellectuals. This was the culmination of transfer of control of much of India from the British East India Company to The Crown.
1879 The “Leonidas,” first emigrant ship to Fiji, adds 498 Indian indentured laborers to the nearly 340,000 already working in other British Empire colonies.
1884-1898 British Somali-Land under British Indian rule.
8 December 1885 All India National Congress Founded.it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Empire in Asia and Africa. From the late 19th century, and especially after 1920, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, Congress became the principal leader of the Indian independence movement, with over 15 million members and over 70 million participants. Congress led India to independence from Great Britain, and powerfully influenced other anti-colonial nationalist movements in the British Empire.
1886 Upper Burma Conquered.
1886-1937 Upper Burma under British Indian rule.
1888 Max Muller, revising his stance, writes, “Aryan, in scientific language, is utterly inapplicable to race. If I say Aryas, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who spoke the Aryan language.”
1900 India’s tea exports to Britain reach 137 million pounds.
December 1903-September 1904 The British expedition to Tibet, also known as the British invasion of Tibet or the Younghusband expedition to Tibet.The expedition was effectively a temporary invasion by British Indian forces under the auspices of the Tibet Frontier Commission, whose purported mission was to establish diplomatic relations and resolve the dispute over the border between Tibet and Sikkim. In the nineteenth century, the British conquered Burma and Sikkim, occupying the whole southern flank of Tibet. The Tibetan Ganden Phodrang regime, which was then under administrative rule of the Qing dynasty, remained the only Himalayan state free of British influence.
1903 The durbar was held to celebrate the succession of Edward VII and Alexandra of Denmark as Emperor and Empress of India. The two full weeks of festivities were devised in meticulous detail by Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India. It was a dazzling display of pomp, power and split second timing. Neither the earlier Delhi Durbar of 1877, nor the later Durbar held there in 1911, could match the pageantry of Lord Curzon’s 1903 festivities. In a few short months at the end of 1902, a deserted plain was transformed into an elaborate tented city, complete with temporary light railway to bring crowds of spectators out from Delhi, a post office with its own stamp, telephone and telegraphic facilities, a variety of stores, a Police force with specially designed uniform, hospital, magistrate’s court and complex sanitation, drainage and electric light installations. Souvenir guide books were sold and maps of the camping ground distributed. Marketing opportunities were craftily exploited. A special Delhi Durbar Medal was struck, firework displays, exhibitions and glamorous dances held.
The University Act.
May 1908 and May1909 Alipore Bomb Case.Emperor vs Aurobindo Ghosh and others, colloquially referred to as the Alipore Bomb Case, the Muraripukur conspiracy, or the Manicktolla bomb conspiracy, was a criminal case held in India in 1908. The case saw the trial of a number of Indian nationalists of the Anushilan Samiti in Calcutta, under charges of “Waging war against the Government” of the British Raj. The trial was held at Alipore Sessions Court, Calcutta, between May 1908 and May 1909. The trial followed in the wake of the attempt on the life of Presidency Magistrate Douglas Kingsford in Muzaffarpur by Bengali nationalists Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki in April 1908, which was recognized by the Bengal police as linked to attacks against the Raj in the preceding years, including attempts to derail the train carrying Lieutenant-Governor Sir Andrew Fraser in December 1907.
1905 Lord Curzon, arrogant British Viceroy of India, resigns.
1909 Minto-Morley Reforms.
7-16 December 1911 Dehli Darbar held to commemorate the coronation in Britain a few months earlier of George V and Mary of Teck and allow their proclamation as Emperor and Empress of India. The official ceremonies lasted from 7 December to 16 December, with the Durbar itself occurring on Tuesday, 12 December. The royal couple arrived at Coronation Park in their Coronation robes, the King-Emperor wearing the Imperial Crown of India with eight arches, containing 6170 exquisitely cut diamonds, and covered with sapphires, emeralds and rubies, with a velvet and miniver cap all weighing 34.05 ounces (965 g). They received homage from the native princes – including one woman, the Begum of Bhopal – at the shamiana (ceremonial tent); controversy ensued when the Gaekwar of Baroda, Maharajah (Emperor) Sayajirao III, approached the royal couple without his jewellery on, and after a simple bow turned his back to them when leaving. His action was interpreted at the time as a sign of dissent to British rule. Afterwards, the royal couple ascended to the domed royal pavilion, where the King-Emperor announced the move of India’s capital from Calcutta to Delhi. The annulment of the Partition of Bengal was also announced during the ceremony.
12 December 1911 British government change capital city from Calcutta to Delhi.
1912 Anti-Indian racial riots on the US West Coast expel large Hindu immigrant population.
23 December 1912 The Delhi Conspiracy case, also known as the Delhi-Lahore Conspiracy, refers to a conspiracy in 1912 to assassinate the then Viceroy of India, Lord Hardinge, on the occasion of transferring the capital of British India from Calcutta to New Delhi. Hatched by the Indian revolutionary underground in Bengal and Punjab and headed by Rashbehari Bose, the conspiracy culminated on the attempted assassination on 23 December 1912 when a homemade bomb was thrown into the Viceroys’ Howdah when the ceremonial procession moved through the Chandni Chowk suburb of Delhi. Although injured in the attempt, the Viceroy escaped with flesh wounds, but his Mahout was killed in the attack. Lady Hardinge was unscathed. Lord Hardinge himself was injured all over the back, legs, and head by fragments of the bomb, the flesh on his shoulders being torn in strips.
1913 New law prohibits Indian immigration to S. Africa, primarily in answer to white colonists’ alarm at competition of Indian merchants and expired labor contracts.
1914 US government excludes Indian citizens from immigration. Restriction stands until 1965.
1917 Last Hindu Indian indentured laborers are brought to British Christian colonies of Fiji and Trinidad.
1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic kills 12.5 million in India, 21.6 million worldwide.
13 April 1919 The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place on 13 April 1919 when troops of the British Indian Army under the command of Colonel Reginald Dyer fired rifles into a crowd of Baishakhi pilgrims, who had gathered in Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, Punjab. The civilians, in the majority Sikhs, had assembled to participate in the annual Baisakhi celebrations, a religious and cultural festival for Punjabi people and also to condemn the arrest and deportation of two national leaders, Satya Pal and Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew. Coming from outside the city, many may have been unaware of the imposition of martial law earlier that day. The Jallianwalla Bagh is a public garden of 6 to 7 acres (28,000 m2), walled on all sides, with five entrances. To enter, troops first blocked the entry by a tank and locked the exit. On Dyer’s orders, his troops fired on the crowd for ten minutes, directing their bullets largely towards the few open gates through which people were trying to flee. The British Government released figures stating 379 dead and 1,200 wounded. Other sources place the number of dead at well over 1,000. This “brutality stunned the entire nation”, resulting in a “wrenching loss of faith” of the general public in the intentions of the UK. The ineffective inquiry and the initial accolades for Dyer by the House of Lords fueled widespread anger, leading to the Non-cooperation Movement of 1920–22.
1919 Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms.
Rowlatt Act.
1920 System of indentured servitude is abolished by India, following grassroots agitation by Mahatma Gandhi.
1923 US law excludes citizens of India from naturalization.
1924 Sir John Marshall (1876-1958) discovers relics of the Indus Valley Hindu civilization. Begins large-scale excavations.
1927 & 34 Indians permitted to sit as jurors and court magistrates.
1927 Simon Commission.
1931 Dr. Karan Singh is born, son and heir apparent of Kashmir’s last Maharaja; becomes parliamentarian, Indian ambassador to the US and global Hindu spokesman.
5 March, 1931 The Gandhi Irwin Pact was a political agreement signed by Mahatma Gandhi and the then Viceroy of India, Lord Irwin on 5 March 1931 before the second Round Table Conference in London. Before this, the viceroy Lord Irwin announced in October 1929, a vague offer of ‘dominion status’ for India in an unspecified future and a Round Table Conference to discuss a future constitution.
16 August 1932 The Communal Award was made by the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald on 16 August 1932 granting separate electorates in India for the Forward Caste, scheduled Caste, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Indian- Christians, Anglo-Indians, Europeans and Depressed Classes (now known as the Scheduled Caste) etc. The principle of weightage was also applied. The reason behind introduction of this ‘Award’ was that Ramsay MacDonald considered himself as ‘a friend of the Indians’ and thus wanted to resolve the issues in India. The ‘Communal Award’ was announced after the failure of the Second of the Three Round Table Conferences (India). The ‘award’ attracted severe criticism from Mahatma Gandhi.
August 1935 Government of India Act.
Winter 1936-37 Provincial elections were held in British India in the winter of 1936-37 as mandated by the Government of India Act 1935. Elections were held in eleven provinces – Madras, Central Provinces, Bihar, Orissa, United Provinces, Bombay Presidency, Assam, NWFP, Bengal, Punjab and Sindh. The final results of the elections were declared in February 1937. The Indian National Congress emerged in power in eight of the provinces – the three exceptions being Bengal, Punjab, and Sindh. The All-India Muslim League failed to form the government in any province. The Congress ministries resigned in October and November 1939, in protest against Viceroy Lord Linlithgow’s action of declaring India to be a belligerent in the Second World War without consulting the Indian people.
1941 First US chair of Sanskrit and Indology established at Yale University.
1942 American Oriental Society founded
1942 At sites along the lost Sarasvati River in Rajasthan, archeologist Sir Aurel Stein finds shards with incised characters identical to those on Indus Valley seals.
1945 Wavell Plan Simla Conference.
July 1947 Indian Independence Act 1947 by British Raj.
August India wins freedom after partition
Till 1947 The Trucial States of the Persian Gulf and the states under the Persian Gulf Residency were theoretically princely states as well as Presidencies and provinces of British India and used the rupee as their unit of currency.
East India Company Raj in India
Governors General
1) Warren Hasting (20 October 1773 – 1 February 1785)
1770 (1769–73) Bengal famine.
1773–74 Rohilla War.
1777–83 First Anglo-Maratha War.
1783–84 Chalisa famine.
1780–1784 Second Anglo-Mysore War.
2) Charles Cornwallis (12 September 1786 – 28 October 1793)
1793 Cornwallis Code.
Permanent Settlement.
1791 Cochin became semi-protected States under British.
1789–92 Third Anglo-Mysore War.
1791–92 Doji bara famine.
3) John Shore (28 October 1793 – March 1798)
East India Company Army re-organized and down-sized.
1793–97 First Pazhassi Revolt in Malabar.
1794 Jaipur comes under British protection.
1795 Travancore comes under British protection.
1796 Andaman Islands occupied.
1796 Company took control of coastal region Ceylon from Dutch.
4) Richard Wellesley (18 May 1798 – 30 July 1805)
1798 Nizam of Hyderabad becomes first State to sign Subsidiary alliance introduced by Wellesley.
1798–99 Fourth Anglo-Mysore War.
1800–1805 Second Pazhassi Revolt in Malabar.
1801 Nawab of Oudh cedes Gorakhpur and Rohilkhand divisions; Allahabad, Fatehpur, Cawnpore, Etawah, Mainpuri, Etah districts;
part of Mirzapur; and terai of Kumaun (Ceded Provinces, 1801)
Treaty of Bassein signed by Peshwa Baji Rao II accepting Subsidiary Alliance
1803 Battle of Delhi
1803–05 Second Anglo-Maratha War
1805 Remainder of Doab, Delhi and Agra division, parts of Bundelkhand annexed from Maratha Empire
1805 Ceded and Conquered Provinces established.
5) Charles Cornwallis (Second Term) (30 July 1805 – 5 October 1805)
Financial strain in East India Company after costly campaigns.
Cornwallis reappointed to bring peace, but dies in Ghazipur.
6) George Hilario Barlow (locum tenens) (10 October 1805 – 31 July 1807)
10 July 1806 Vellore Mutiny.
7) Lord Minto (31 July 1807 – 4 October 1813)
Invasion of Java.
Occupation of Mauritius.
8) Marquess of Hastings (4 October 1813 – 9 January 1823)
1814 Anglo-Nepal War.
Annexation of Kumaon, Garhwal, and east Sikkim.
1815 Cis-Sutlej states.
1817–18 Third Anglo-Maratha War.
1817 States of Rajputana accept British suzerainty.
1818 Singapore was founded.
Cutch accepts British suzerainty.
1819 Gaikwads of Baroda accept British suzerainty.
Central India Agency.
9) Lord Amherst (1 August 1823 – 13 March 1828)
1823–26 First Anglo–Burmese War. Annexation of Assam, Manipur, Arakan, and Tenasserim from Burma.
10) William Bentinck (4 July 1828 – 20 March 1835)
1829 Bengal Sati Regulation.
1836–48 Thuggee and Dacoity Suppression Acts.
1831–81 Mysore State goes under British administration.
1833 Bahawalpur accepts British Suzerainty.
1834 Earliest articulation of the Doctrine of Lapse.
1834 Coorg annexed.
11) Lord Auckland (4 March 1836 – 28 February 1842)
1836 North-Western Provinces established.
1837 Post Offices were established.
1837–38 Agra famine.
1839 Aden is captured by Company.
1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War.
1842 Massacre of Elphinstone’s army.
12) Lord Ellenborough (28 February 1842 – June 1844)
1839–42 First Anglo-Afghan War.
1843 Annexation of Sindh.
Indian Slavery Act.
13) Henry Hardinge (23 July 1844 – 12 January 1848)
1845–46 First Anglo-Sikh War.
1846 Sikhs cede Jullundur Doab, Hazara, and Kashmir to the British under Treaty of Lahore.
Sale of Kashmir to Gulab Singh of Jammu under Treaty of Amritsar.
14) Marquess of Dalhousie (12 January 1848 – 28 February 1856)
1848–1849 Second Anglo-Sikh War
1849–56 Annexation of Punjab and North-West Frontier Province.
1850 Construction begins on Indian Railways.
1850 Caste Disabilities Removal Act.
1851 First telegraph line laid in India.
1852–53 Second Anglo-Burmese War.
Annexation of Lower Burma.
Under Doctrine of Lapse
1848 Annexation of Satara.
1849 Annexation of Jaipur and Sambalpur.
1854 Annexation of Nagpur.
1854 Annexation of Jhansi.
1853 Annexation of Berar.
1856 Annexation of Awadh.
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1854 Ganges Canal opened.
1854 Postage Stamps for India were introduced.
1855 Public Telegram services starts operation.
15) Charles Canning (28 February 1856 – 1 November 1858)
25 July 1856 Hindu Widows Remarriage Act
January–September 1857 First Indian universities founded
10 May 1857 – 20 June 1858 Indian Rebellion of 1857 largely in North-Western Provinces and Oudh
1858 Liquidation of the English East India Company under Government of India Act
1858 University of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras were set up.
1858 The Government of India Act.
Crown Raj in India 28 June 1858- 14 August 1947
The Viscount Canning (1 November 1858 – 21 March 1862)
1858 Reorganization of British Indian Army (contemporaneously and hereafter Indian Army).
1860 Construction of Universities begins: University of Bombay, University of Madras, and University of Calcutta
1860 Indian Penal Code passed into law in
1860–1861 Famine of Upper Doab
1861 Indian Councils Act 1861
1861 Establishment of Archaeological Survey of India in
1861 James Wilson, financial member of Council of India reorganizes customs, imposes income tax, creates paper currency.
1861 Indian Police Act of 1861, creation of Imperial Police later known as Indian Police Service.
Earl of Elgin (21 March 1862–20 November 1863)
20 November 1863 Viceroy dies prematurely in Dharamsala.
Robert Napier (21 November 1863 2 December 1863)
William Denison (2 December 1863 12 January 1864)
Sir John Lawrence, Bt (12 January 1864- 12 January 1869)
1864–1865 Anglo-Bhutan Duar War.
1866 Famine of Orissa.
1869 Famine of Rajputana.
Creation of Department of Irrigation.
1867 Creation of Imperial Forestry Service (now Indian Forest Service).
1869 Nicobar Islands annexed and incorporated into India.
1863 Establishment of Shimla as India’s summer capital.
The Earl of Mayo ( 12 January 1869 – 8 February 1872)
Creation of Department of Agriculture (now Ministry of Agriculture).
Major extension of railways, roads, and canals.
1870 Indian Councils Act.
1872 Creation of Andaman and Nicobar Islands as a Chief Commissionership.
Assassination of Lord Mayo in the Andamans by a Pathan Sher Ali Afridi.
Started the Census.
The Lord Napier (acting) (9 February 1872 23 February 1872)
The Lord Northbrook (3 May 1872 12 April 1876)
1873–74 Mortalities in Bihar famine of prevented by importation of rice from Burma.
Gaikwad of Baroda dethroned for misgovernment; dominions continued to a child ruler.
1874 Indian Councils Act of 1874
1875–76 Visit of the Prince of Wales, future Edward VII
The Lord Lytton (12 April 1876 8 June 1880)
Baluchistan established as a Chief Commissionership
1877 Queen Victoria (in absentia) proclaimed Empress of India at Delhi Durbar.
1876–78 Great Famine. 5.25 million dead; reduced relief offered at expense of Rs. 80 million.
1878–80 Creation of Famine Commission under Sir Richard Strachey.
1878 Indian Forest Act.
Second Anglo-Afghan War.
Vernacular Press Act.
1878 The Indians Act.
The Marquess of Ripon (8 June 1880 13 December 1884)
End of Second Anglo-Afghan War.
1881 First Factory Act.
1882 Repeal of Vernacular Press Act of 1878. Compromise on the Ilbert Bill.
Local Government Acts extend self-government from towns to country.
1882 University of Punjab established in Lahore.
1883 Famine Code promulgated by the Government of India.
Creation of the Education Commission. Creation of indigenous schools, especially for Muslims.
Repeal of import duties on cotton and of most tariffs. Railway extension.
Ilbert Bill.
The Earl of Dufferin (13 December 1884 10 December 1888)
Passage of Bengal Tenancy Bill
Third Anglo-Burmese War.
Joint Anglo-Russian Boundary Commission appointed for the Afghan frontier.
1885 Russian attack on Afghans at Panjdeh. The Great Game in full play.
Report of Public Services Commission of 1886–87, creation of Imperial Civil Service (later Indian Civil Service (ICS), and today Indian Administrative Service)
1887 University of Allahabad established.
1887 Queen Victoria’s Jubilee.
Formation of Indian National Congress.
The Marquess of Lansdowne (10 December 1888 11 October 1894)
Strengthening of NW Frontier defense.
Creation of Imperial Service Troops consisting of regiments contributed by the princely states.
1889 Gilgit Agency leased.
1892 British Parliament passes Indian Councils Act 1892, opening the Imperial Legislative Council to Indians.
Revolution in princely state of Manipur and subsequent reinstatement of ruler.
High point of The Great Game. Establishment of the Durand Line between British India and Afghanistan.
1893 Railways, roads, and irrigation works begun in Burma. Border between Burma and Siam finalized.
1873–93 Fall of the Rupee, resulting from the steady depreciation of silver currency worldwide.
1894 Indian Prisons Act of 1894.
The Earl of Elgin (11 October 1894 6 January 1899)
Reorganization of Indian Army (from Presidency System to the four Commands).
1895 Pamir agreement with Russia.
1895 The Chitral Campaign.
1896 Bubonic plague in Bombay.
1896–97 The Tirah Campaign.
1896–97 Indian famine which started in Bundelkhand.
1898 Bubonic plague in Calcutta riots in wake of plague prevention measures.
Establishment of Provincial Legislative Councils in Burma and Punjab; the former a new Lieutenant Governorship.
The Lord Curzon of Kedleston (6 January 1899 18 November 1905)
1901 Creation of the North West Frontier Province under a Chief Commissioner.
1899–1900 Indian famine.
Return of the bubonic plague, 1 million deaths.
1899 Financial Reform Act of 1899; Gold Reserve Fund created for India.
1900 Punjab Land Alienation Act.
Inauguration of Department (now Ministry) of Commerce and Industry.
1901 Death of Queen Victoria; dedication of the Victoria Memorial Hall, Calcutta as a national gallery of Indian antiquities, art, and history.
1903 Coronation Durbar in Delhi. Edward VII (in absentia) proclaimed Emperor of India.
1903–04 Francis Younghusband’s British expedition to Tibet
1904 North-Western Provinces (previously Ceded and Conquered Provinces) and Oudh renamed United Provinces.
1904 Reorganization of Indian Universities Act.
Systemization of preservation and restoration of ancient monuments by Archaeological Survey of India with Indian Ancient Monument Preservation Act.
1904 Inauguration of agricultural banking with Cooperative Credit Societies Act of 1904.
1905 Partition of Bengal; new province of East Bengal and Assam under a Lieutenant-Governor.
1901 Census Results and Findings
Census of 1901 gives the total population at 294 million, including 62 million in the princely states and 232 million in British India. About 170,000 are Europeans. 15 million men and 1 million women are literate. Of those school-aged, 25% of the boys and 3% of the girls attend. There are 207 million Hindus, and 63x million Muslims, along with 9 million Buddhists (in Burma), 3 million Christians, 2 million Sikhs, 1 million Jains, and 8.4 million who practise animism.
The Earl of Minto (18 November 1905 23 November 1910)
Creation of the Railway Board.
1907 Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907.
1909 Indian Councils Act 1909 (also Minto-Morley Reforms).
1909 Appointment of Indian Factories Commission.
1910 Establishment of Department of Education (now Ministry of Education).
The Lord Hardinge of Penshurst (23 November 1910 4 April 1916)
1911 Visit of King George V and Queen Mary: commemoration as Emperor and Empress of India at last Delhi Durbar King George V announces creation of new city of New Delhi to replace Calcutta as capital of India.
Indian High Courts Act of 1911.
Indian Factories Act of 1911.
1912–1929 Construction of New Delhi.
1914 World War I, Indian Army in: Western Front, Belgium, 1914; German East Africa (Battle of Tanga, 1914).
1915 Passage of Defense of India Act 1915.
1915-16 Mesopotamian Campaign (Battle of Ctesiphon, 1915; Siege of Kut, 1915–16); Battle of Galliopoli, 1915–16.
The Lord Chelmsford (4 April 1916 2 April 1921)
1917-18 Indian Army in: Mesopotamian Campaign (Fall of Baghdad, 1917);
Sinai and Palestine Campaign (Battle of Megiddo, 1918)
1919 Passage of Rowlatt Act, 1919
1919 Government of India Act 1919 (also Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms)
1919 Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, 1919
1919 Third Anglo-Afghan War, 1919
1920 University of Rangoon established in 1920.
The Earl of Reading (2 April 1921 3 April 1926)
1922 University of Delhi established.
1923 Indian Workers Compensation Act.
The Lord Irwin (3 April 1926 18 April 1931)
1926 Indian Trade Unions Act of 1926.
1927 Indian Forest Act, 1927.
1929 Appointment of Royal Commission of Indian Labor.
1930-32 Indian Constitutional Round Table Conferences, London, 1930–32, Gandhi-Irwin Pact, 1931.
The Earl of Willingdon (18 April 1931 18 April 1936)
1931 New Delhi inaugurated as capital of India.
1933 Indian Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1933.
1934 Indian Factories Act of 1934.
1932 Royal Indian Air Force created.
1932 Indian Military Academy established.
1935 Government of India Act 1935.
Creation of Reserve Bank of India
The Marquess of Linlithgow (18 April 1936 1 October 1943)
1936 Indian Payment of Wages Act of 1936
1937 Burma administered independently after 1937 with creation of new cabinet position Secretary of State for India and Burma, and with the Burma Office separated off from the India Office
1937 Indian Provincial Elections
1942 Cripps’ mission to India.
Indian Army in Mediterranean, Middle East and African theatres of World War II (North African campaign): (Operation Compass, Operation Crusader, First Battle of El Alamein, Second Battle of El Alamein. East African campaign, 1940, Anglo-Iraqi War, 1941, Syria-Lebanon campaign, 1941, Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, 1941)
Indian Army in Battle of Hong Kong, Battle of Malaya, Battle of Singapore
Burma Campaign of World War II begins in 1942.
The Viscount Wavell (1 October 1943 21 February 1947)
1943-45 Indian Army becomes, at 2.5 million men, the largest all-volunteer force in history. World War II: Burma Campaign, (Battle of Kohima, Battle of Imphal).
1943 Bengal famine of 1943.
Indian Army in Italian campaign (Battle of Monte Cassino)
1945 British Labor Party wins UK General Election with Clement Attlee as prime minister.
1946 Cabinet Mission to India.
Indian Elections of 1946.
The Viscount Mountbatten of Burma (21 February 1947– 15 August 1947)
1947 Indian Independence Act 1947 of the British Parliament enacted on 18 July 1947.
1947 Radcliffe Award, August 1947.
1947 Partition of India. India Office and position of Secretary of State for India abolished; ministerial responsibility within the United Kingdom for British relations with India and Pakistan is transferred to the Commonwealth Relations Office.
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Chronology of the History of Marathas
19 February, 1627 Birth of Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.
1644 Shivaji takes oath of Independence at Raireshwar.
1659 Shivaji’s ill-equipped and small Maratha army defeat numerically much larger Adilshahi troops at the Battle of Pratapgarh marking the first victory of the Maratha Empire. Shivaji personally kills Adilshahi commander Afzal Khan (general).
11 June, 1665 The Treaty of Purandar signed between the Rajput ruler Jai Singh I, who was commander of the Mughal Empire and Maratha Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Shivaji was forced to sign the agreement after Jai Singh besieged Purandar fort.
1674 Forces led by Shivaji defeat Aurangzeb’s troops, and establishes Maratha Empire.
3 April 1680 Shivaji dies of fever at Raigad.
20 July 1680 Sambhaji becomes 2nd Chhatrapati of the Maratha Empire.
1681 Aurangzeb invades Deccan.
11 March 1689 Chatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj dies. Killed by Aurangzeb.
3 March 1700 Rajaram Chhatrapati dies.
1720 Bajirao I appointed by Shahu Maharaj as Peshwa (prime minister) who later will expand the Maratha empire.
1760 Marathas defeat Nizam-ul Mulk. Peak of Maratha power.
14 January 1761 The Marathas are routed in the Third Battle of Panipat by the Afghans led by Ahmad Shah Durrani, an ethnic Pashtun, also known as Ahmad Shah Abdali. The battle is considered one of the largest battles fought in the 18th century.
1771 Marathas re-capture Delhi and parts of North India.
1772-1818 Anglo-Maratha wars.
1773 Narayanrao Peshwa is murdered by his uncle Raghunathrao’s wife in front of Raghunathrao.
1774 Chief Justice of the Maratha Empire, Ram Shastri passes death sentence against the ruling Peshwa Raghunathrao for murdering his nephew.
1775-1782 First Anglo-Maratha War
1779 Maratha Sardar Mahadji Shinde routs the East India Company army at the Battle of Wadgaon War ends with the restoration of status quo as per Treaty of Salbai.
20 June 1790 The Marathas under Holkar and General de Boigne defeat the Rajputs of Jaipur and Mughals at the Battle of Patan, where 3000+ Rajput cavalry is killed and the entire Mughal unit vanquished. The defeat crushes Rajput hope of independence from external influence.
February 12-March 13 1800 Nana Fadnavis,Balaji Janardan Bhanu dies.———————–??????
1803-1805 Second Anglo-Maratha War. The Maratha Empire at that time consisted of a confederacy of five major chiefs: the Peshwa (Prime Minister) at the capital city of Poona, the Gaekwad chief of Baroda, the Scindia chief of Gwalior, the Holkar chief of Indore, and the Bhonsale chief of Nagpur.
31 March 1802 Treaty of Bassein.
3 December 1776- 28 October 1811 Yashwantrao Holkar.
10 January 1775- 28 January 1851 Baji Rao II, Last Peshwa of the Maratha empire.
1817-1818 Third Anglo-Maratha War ends with the defeat of Bajirao II and the end of the Maratha Empire leaving the East India Company with control of almost the whole of India.
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Chronology of Sikh History
15 April, 1469 Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism is born.
1459-1534 Bhai Mardana Ji.
1539 Guru Angad Dev becomes second guru of Sikhs.
26 March, 1552 Guru Amar Das becomes third Guru of Sikhs.
1 September1574 Guru Ram Das becomes fourth Guru of Sikhs.
1 September1581 Guru Arjan Dev becomes fifth Guru of Sikhs.
25 May 1606 Guru Hargobind becomes sixth guru of Sikhs.
8 March 1644 Guru Har Rai becomes seventh guru of Sikhs.
6 October 1661 Guru Har Krishan becomes eight guru of Sikhs.
20 March 1665 Guru Tegh Bahadur becomes ninth Guru of Sikhs.
1675 Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Guru of Sikhs is executed in Delhi by the order of Aurangzeb for his support for the Kashmiri Hindus to practice their religion. Guru Gobind Singh becomes tenth Guru of Sikhs.
1699 Guru Gobind Singh, the 10th Guru of Sikhs creates Khalsa, the saint-soldier at Anandpur Sahib, Punjab.
7 October 1708 Guru Granth Sahib (The Sikh Scripture) becomes Guru of Sikhs.
1715 Battle of Gurdas Nangal Banda Bahadur Vs. Abdus-Samad Khan as well as Qamr-ud-Din Khan.
27 October 1670- 9 June 1716 Banda Singh Bahadur.
1716-1799 Sikh Confederacies or Misls Tweleve in All. (Phulkian Misl,Ahluwalia Misl,Bhangi Misl,Kanhaiya Misl, Ramgarhia Misl,Singhpuria Misl,Singh Krora Misl,Nishanvali Misl,Sukerchakia Misl,Dallewalia Misl, Nakai Misl, Shaheedan Misl).
1780-1839 Ranjit Singh.
April 1792-11 April 1801 Ranjit Singh was the chief of Sukerchakia Misl.
122 April 1801 Ranjit Singh became the Raja of Punjab.
1809 East India Company signs the first Treaty of Amritsar with Ranjit Singh.
1839 Ranjit Singh died. Immediately after the death of Ranjit Singh, the British East India Company had begun increasing its military strength, particularly in the regions adjacent to the Punjab, establishing a military cantonment at Ferozepur, only a few miles from the Sutlej River which marked the frontier between British-ruled India and the Punjab.
1 September 1839 Kharrak Singh succeeded Ranjit Singh. His tutor Chet Singh controlled him.
Prime Minister Raja Dhian Singh’s intrigue, Chet Singh killed.
1 September 1839 Kharrak Singh was proclaimed Maharajah and installed on the throne at Lahore Fort.
5 November 1840 Kharrak Singh dies after being poisoned.
6 November 1840 Nau Nihal Singh next in Line to Kharrak Singh meets an accident. While he was passing through Roshnai Darwaza (the gate of the Hazuri Bagh at Lahore Fort) on returning from his father’s cremation, masonry or stones fell from above, killing his companion and injuring the prince, who was taken into the fort by the Vizier Dhian Singh. Nobody else was allowed into the fort, not even his mother, who beat on the fort gates with her bare hands in a fever of anxiety. Eyewitnesses described his initial injuries as being small blows to the head which knocked him unconscious. Later, when his mother and friends were allowed into the fort, Nau Nihal Singh was dead, his head having been smashed in, possibly with a rock.
1840-41 Nau Nihal Singh’s mother Maharani Chand Kaur became the Empress of Sikh Empire, from (1840–41) she challenged Sher Singh, the second son of Maharaja Ranjit Singh Sher-e-Panjab, the stepbrother of her husband Kharak Singh, on the grounds that her co-daughter Nau Nihal, Singh’s widow, Sahib Kaur, was pregnant saying that she should assume regency on behalf of the unborn legal successor to her husband’s throne.
July 1841 Nau Nihal Singh’s widow Sahib Kaur delivered a stillborn son. This ended whatever hopes Chand Kaur had of realizing her claims. There were at the time two major factions within the Punjab contending for power and influence: The Sikh Sindhanwalias and the Hindu Dogras. The Dogras succeeded in raising Sher Singh, the eldest illegitimate son of Ranjit Singh, to the throne.
1839-1845 The army was expanding rapidly in the aftermath of Ranjit Singh’s death, from 29,000 (with 192 guns) to over 80,000 in as landlords and their retainers took up arms. It proclaimed itself to be the embodiment of the Sikh nation. Its regimental panchayats (committees) formed an alternative power source within the kingdom, declaring that Guru Gobind Singh’s ideal of the Sikh commonwealth had been revived, with the Sikhs as a whole assuming all executive, military and civil authority in the State, which British observers decried as a “dangerous military democracy”. British representatives and visitors in the Punjab described the regiments as preserving “puritanical” order internally, but also as being in a perpetual state of mutiny or rebellion against the central Durbar. Maharajah Sher Singh was unable to meet the pay demands of the army, although he reportedly lavished funds on a degenerate court.
27 January 1841 Mahraja Sher Singh became king of Ranjjit Singh’s Empire. Proclaimed Maharaja by his wazir (prime minister) Dhian Singh Dogra, he won the throne after a protracted siege of the Lahore Fort which was held by the Royal family. Thousands died in the siege.
11 June 1842 Sahib Kaur was killed by hillwomen hired by Dhian Singh. They tried to kill her by poisoning her food and eventually finished her off smashing her head with wooden pikes from the kitchen (some reports say they dropped a stone from a balcony crushing her skull.).
1843 East India Company conquered and annexed Sindh, to the south of the Punjab, in a move which many British people regarded as cynical and ignoble. This did not gain the British any respect in the Punjab, and increased suspicions of British motives.
16 September 1843 Sher Singh was killed by his cousin Ajit Singh Sandhawalia.The Sandhawalias also murdered Dhian Singh. The Sandhawalias were thought to have also had designs on the empire.
16 September 1843 Daleep Singh, The Black Prince of Perthshire, became the last Mahraja of Ranjit Singh’s Empire. Mahrani Jind Kaur became his Regent. She controlled all the affairs of his state. The Dogras took their revenge on those responsible for Sher Singh’s murder. The vizier Hira Singh was killed, while attempting to flee the capital with loot from the royal treasury (toshkana), by troops under Sham Singh Attariwala.
December 1844 Jind Kaur’s brother Jawahar Singh became vizier.
1845 Jawahar Singh arranged the assassination of Peshaura Singh, who presented a threat to Duleep Singh. For this, he was called to account by the army.
September 1845 Despite attempts to bribe the army Jawahar Singh was butchered in the presence of Jind Kaur and Duleep Singh. Jind Kaur publicly vowed revenge against her brother’s murderers. She remained regent.
Lal Singh became vizier, and Tej Singh became commander of the army. Sikh historians have stressed that both these men were prominent in the Dogra faction. Originally high caste Hindus from outside the Punjab, both had converted to Sikhism in 1818.
1845-49 Anglo-Sikh Wars
11 December 1845 In response to the British moves considered hostile, the Sikh army began crossing the Sutlej. The Sikhs claimed they were only moving into Sikh possessions (specifically the village of Moran, whose ownership was disputed) on the east side of the river, but the move was regarded by the British as clearly hostile and violated the Treaty of Jehlum.
13 December 1845 The British declared war on the Sikhs. The Sikh Army at that time was led by General Raja Lal Singh who, with Tej Singh, betrayed the Sikhs during the course of the war. Lal Singh was regularly supplying information and even receiving instructions from British officers.
After winning the First Anglo-Sikh War, the English retained the Maharaja Duleep Singh as nominal ruler, but replaced the Maharani by a Council of Regency and later imprisoned and exiled her. Over thirteen years passed before Duleep Singh was permitted to see his mother again.
9 March 1846 Treaty of Lahore.
1848-49 Second Anglo Sikh War. It resulted in the fall of the Sikh Empire, and the annexation of the Punjab and what subsequently became the North-West Frontier Province, by the East India Company.
29 March 1849 The East India Company annexed Punjab. Treaty of Lahore.
1850 Treaty of Amritsar.
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Chronology of the History of the Mysore Sultans
1766–99 Anglo-Mysore Wars
1767 First Anglo-Mysore War begins, in which Haidar Ali of Mysore defeats the combined armies of the East India Company, the Marathas and the Nizam of Hyderabad.
1780-1784 Second Anglo-Mysore War.
11 March 1784 Treaty of Mangalore.
1789-1792 Third Anglo-Mysore War
18 March 1792 Treaty of Seringapatam ended the Third Anglo-Mysore War.
1798-1799 Fourth Anglo-Mysore War
4 May 1799 Tipu Sultan killed.
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BURMA
1823-1826 Anglo-Burmese War.
24 February 1826 Treaty of Yandabo.
1826-1847 British rule in Burma.
HINDU RENAISSANCE AND NATIONALISM FROM EARLY MODERN TO MODERN TIMES: A CHRONOLOGY
PEOPLE & EVENTS
22 May 1772-1833 Raja Ram Mohan Roy.
1814 Raja Ram Mohan Roy started Atmiya Sabha a philosophical discussion circle in Calcutta.
1817 Establishment of Hindu College (Presidency College, now Presidency University, Kolkata) through the efforts of Raja Ram Mohan Roy.
26 September 1820–29 July 1891 Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar CIE. He was a British Indian Bengali polymath and a key figure of the Bengal Renaissance. He was a philosopher, academic educator, writer, translator, printer, publisher, entrepreneur, reformer and philanthropist.
12 February 1824–30 October 1883 Dayanand Saraswati. He was an Indian religious leader and founder of the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movements of the Vedic dharma. He was also a renowned scholar of the Vedic lore and Sanskrit language. He was the first to give the call for Swaraj as “Indian for India” in 1876, a call later taken up by Lokmanya Tilak.
11 April 1827–28 November 1890 Jyotirao Govindrao Phule. He was an Indian social activist, a thinker, anti-caste social reformer and writer from Maharashtra.
1828 Brahmo Samaj formed.It is a Hindu reform movement. It is the societal component of Brahmoism, a monotheistic reformist movement of the Hindu religion that appeared during the Bengal Renaissance. It is practised today mainly as the Adi Dharm after its eclipse in Bengal consequent to the exit of the Tattwabodini Sabha from its ranks in 1839. After the publication of Hemendranath Tagore’s Brahmo Anusthan (code of practice) in 1860 which formally divorced Brahmoism from Hinduism, the first Brahmo Samaj was founded in 1861 at Lahore by Pandit Nobin Chandra Roy.
18 February 1836–16 August 1886 Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. He was an Indian mystic and yogi during the 19th century. Ramakrishna was given to spiritual ecstacies from a young age, and was influenced by several religious traditions, including devotion toward the goddess Kali, Tantra, Vaishnava bhakti, and Advaita Vedanta.
12 January 1863–4 July 1902 Swami Vivekananda was an Indian Hindu monk, a chief disciple of the 19th-century Indian mystic Ramakrishna. He was a key figure in the introduction of the Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world and is credited with raising interfaith awareness, bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion during the late 19th century.
4 November 1845–17 February 1883 Vasudev Balwant Phadke. He an Indian independence activist and revolutionary who sought India’s independence from British. Phadke was moved by the plight of the farmer community during British Raj. Phadke believed that Swaraj was the only remedy for their ills. With the help of the Koli, Bhil and Dhangar communities in Maharashtra, Vasudev formed a revolutionary group of Ramoshi.
23 July 1856–1 August 1920 Bal Gangadhar Tilak or Lokmanya Tilak was an Indian nationalist, teacher, social reformer, lawyer and an independence activist. He was the first leader of the Indian Independence Movement. The British colonial authorities called him “The father of the Indian unrest.” He was also conferred with the title of “Lokmanya”, which means “accepted by the people (as their leader).”
20 August 1856–20 September 1928 Narayana Guru, also known as Sri Narayana Guru was a social reformer of India. He was born into a family of the Ezhava caste in an era when people from such communities, which were regarded as Avarna, faced much injustice in the caste-ridden society of Kerala. He led a reform movement in Kerala, rejected casteism, and promoted new values of spiritual freedom and social equality.
November 7, 1858– May 20, 1932 Bipin Chandra Pal was an Indian Social Reformer and Pro-Independence activist.
19 May 1824–1859 Nana Saheb, born as Dhondo Pat was an Indian Peshwa of Maratha empire, aristocrat and fighter, who led the rebellion in Cawnpore (Kanpur) during the 1857 uprising. As the adopted son of the exiled Maratha Peshwa Baji Rao II, Nana Sahib believed that he was entitled to a pension from the English East India Company, but the underlying contractual issues are rather murky. The Company’s refusal to continue the pension after his father’s death, as well as what he perceived as high-handed policies, compelled him to revolt and seek independence from company rule in India.
19 November 1828–18 June 1858 Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi was the queen of the princely state of Jhansi in North India currently present in Jhansi district in Uttar Pradesh, India. She was one of the leading figures of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and became a symbol of resistance to the British Raj for Indian nationalists.
1777–26 April 1858 Veer Kunwar Singh was a notable leader during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. He belonged to a royal Ujjainiya (Panwar) Rajput house of Jagdispur, currently a part of Bhojpur district, Bihar, India. At the age of 80, he led a select band of armed soldiers against the troops under the command of the British East India Company. He was the chief organizer of the fight against the British in Bihar.
1814–18 April 1859 Tantia Tope was a general in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and one of its notable leaders. He was born as Ramachandra Panduranga to a Maratha Brahman family and took on the title Tope, meaning commanding officer.
7 May 1861–7 August 1941 Rabindranath Tagore aka GuruDev. He was a Bengali polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of Gitanjali and its “profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse”, he became in 1913 the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
6 May 1861–6 February 1931 Motilal Nehru was an Indian lawyer, an activist of the Indian Independence Movement and an important leader of the Indian National Congress, who also served as the Congress President twice, 1919–1920 and 1928–1929. He was the founder patriarch of the Nehru-Gandhi family.
4 September 1825–30 June 1917 Dadabhai Naoroji known as the Grand Old Man of India, was a Parsi intellectual, educator, cotton trader, and an early Indian political and social leader. He was a Liberal Party member of Parliament (MP) in the United Kingdom House of Commons between 1892 and 1895, and the first Indian to be a British MP, notwithstanding the Anglo-Indian MP David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre, who was disfranchised for corruption. Naoroji is also credited with the founding of the Indian National Congress, along with A.O. Hume and Dinshaw Edulji Wacha. His book Poverty and Un-British Rule in India brought attention to the draining of India’s wealth into Britain. He was also a member of the Second International along with Kautsky and Plekhanov.
1844–1936 Sir Dinshaw Edulji Wacha was a Parsi Indian politician from Bombay. He was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress, and its President in 1901. Wacha was a member of the Bombay Municipality for 40 years and was quite active. He was the President of the Bombay Presidency for three years from 1915-1918, after being the Secretary for thirty years from 1885-1915. He was active in various different areas, especially education, social reforms and economics and finance. In 1897 he embarrassed the Indian government by making everyone aware of their financial errors and shortcomings. He pointed out that they were foolishly overspending on military and civil expenditures. Wacha was very bright and was knighted in 1917. He was effective in communicating with the public and educating them on the political and economic situation of India. It is said that no economic issue or financial mistake could get past him as he would always recognize the error and bring it to the attention of the people. Sawaraj can mean generally self-governance or “self-rule”, and was used synonymously with “home-rule” by Maharishi Dayanand Saraswati and later on by Mahatma Gandhi, but the word usually refers to Gandhi’s concept for Indian independence from foreign domination. Swaraj lays stress on governance, not by a hierarchical government, but by self-governance through individuals and community building. The focus is on political decentralization. Since this is against the political and social systems followed by Britain, Gandhi’s concept of Swaraj advocated India’s discarding British political, economic, bureaucratic, legal, military, and educational institutions. S. Satyamurti, Chittaranjan Das and Motilal Nehru were among a contrasting group of Swarajists who laid the foundation for parliamentary democracy in India.
6 June 1829–31 July 1912 Allan Octavian Hume was a member of the Imperial Civil Service (later the Indian Civil Service), a political reformer, ornithologist and botanist who worked in British India. He was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress, a political party that was later to lead in the Indian independence movement. A notable ornithologist, Hume has been called “the Father of Indian Ornithology” and, by those who found him dogmatic, “the Pope of Indian ornithology.”
28 January 1865–17 November 1928 Lala Lajpat Rai was an Indian freedom fighter. He played a pivotal role in the Indian Independence movement. He was popularly known as Punjab Kesari. He was one third of the Lal Bal Pal triumvirate.
1867 Prarthana Samaj, or “Prayer Society” in Sanskrit, was a movement for religious and social reform in Bombay based on earlier reform movements. Prarthana Samaj was founded by Atmaram Panduranga, with an aim to make people believe in one God and worship only one God. It became popular after Mahadev Govind Ranade joined. The main reformers were the intellectuals who advocated reforms of the social system of the Hindus.
2 October 1869–30 January 1948 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He was an Indian activist who was the leader of the Indian independence movement against British rule. Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahātmā (Sanskrit: “high-souled”, “venerable”)- applied to him first in 1914 in South Africa-is now used worldwide. In India, he is also called Bapu (Gujarati: endearment for father, papa) and Gandhi ji, and unofficially known as the Father of the Nation.
29 November 1869–20 January 1951 Amritlal Vithaldas Thakkar, popularly known as Thakkar Bapa was an Indian social worker who worked for uplift of tribal people in Gujarat state in India. He became a member of the Servants of India Society founded by Gopal Krishna Gokhale in 1914. In 1922, he founded the Bhil Seva Mandal. Later, he became the general secretary of the Harijan Sevak Sangh founded by Mahatma Gandhi in 1932. The Bharatiya Adimjati Sevak Sangh was founded on 24 October 1948 on his initiative. When Indian constitution was in process, Thakkarbapa visited remotest and most difficult parts of India and conducted probe into the situation of tribal and Harijan people. He added valuable inputs in the process of constitution. Mahatma Gandhi would call him ‘Bapa’.
9 May 1866–19 February 1915 Gopal Krishna Gokhale was one of the social and political leaders during the Indian Independence Movement against the British Empire in India. Gokhale was a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and founder of the Servants of India Society. Through the Society as well as the Congress and other legislative bodies he served in, Gokhale campaigned for Indian self-rule and also social reform. He was the leader of the moderate faction of the Congress party that advocated reforms by working with existing government institutions.
5 November 1869-16 June 1925 Chittaranjan Das popularly called Deshbandhu popularly called Deshbandhu (Friend of the Nation), was a leading Indian politician, a prominent lawyer, an activist of the Indian National Movement and founder-leader of the Swaraj (Independence) Party in Bengal during British occupation in India.
31 October 1875-15 December 1950 Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel popularly known as Sardar Patel, was the 1st Deputy Prime Minister of India. He was an Indian barrister and statesman, a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and a founding father of the Republic of India who played a leading role in the country’s struggle for independence and guided its integration into a united, independent nation. In India and elsewhere, he was often addressed as Sardar, which means Chief in Hindi, Urdu, and Persian. He acted as de facto Supreme Commander-in-chief of Indian army during Political integration of India and Indo-Pakistani War of 1947.
10 December 1878-25 December 1972 Chakravarti Rajagopalachari informally called Rajaji or C.R., was an Indian politician, independence activist, lawyer, writer and statesman. Rajagopalachari was the last Governor-General of India, as India soon became a Republic in 1950. Furthermore, he was the First Indian Governor General of the country, before him the posts were held by British nationals. He also served as leader of the Indian National Congress, Premier of the Madras Presidency, Governor of West Bengal, Minister for Home Affairs of the Indian Union and Chief Minister of Madras state. Rajagopalachari founded the Swatantra Party and was one of the first recipients of India’s highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna. He vehemently opposed the use of nuclear weapons and was a proponent of world peace and disarmament. During his lifetime, he also acquired the nickname ‘Mango of Krishnagiri’.
14 October 1884-4 March 1939 Lala Har Dayal was an Indian nationalist revolutionary. He was a polymath who turned down a career in the Indian Civil Service. His simple living and intellectual acumen inspired many expatriate Indians living in Canada and the U.S. to fight against British Imperialism during the First World War.
19 August 1887-28 March 1943 Sundara Sastri Satyamurti was an Indian independence activist and politician. He was acclaimed for his rhetoric and was one of the leading politicians of the Indian National Congress from the Madras Presidency, alongside S. Srinivasa Iyengar, C. Rajagopalachari and T. Prakasam. Satyamurti is regarded as the mentor of K. Kamaraj, Chief Minister of Madras state from 1954 to 1962.
21 March 1887-24 January 1954 Manabendra Nath Roy born Narendra Nath Bhattacharya, was an Indian revolutionary, radical activist and political theorist, as well as a noted philosopher in the 20th century. Roy was a founder of the Mexican Communist Party and the Communist Party of India. He was also a delegate to congresses of the Communist International and Russia’s aide to China. Following the rise of Joseph Stalin, Roy left the mainline communist movement to pursue an independent radical politics. In 1940 Roy was instrumental in the formation of the Radical Democratic Party, an organization in which he played a leading role for much of the decade of the 1940s. In the aftermath of World War II Roy moved away from Marxism to espouse the philosophy of radical humanism, attempting to chart a third course between liberalism and communism.
3 June 1891-28 October 1937 Abaninath Mukherji was an Indian revolutionary and co-founder of the Communist Party of India. His name was often spelt Abani Mukherjee.
1889-1982 Rafiq Ahmad commonly known as Comrade Rafiq Ahmad of Bhopal, was a famous communist activist of the 20th century India. He was one of the founders of the Communist Party of India in Tashkent in 1921. After the independence of India, he continued to live in Bhopal and later died in the same city. But post-independence he had limited his political activities.
1901-1970 Comrade Sultan Ahmed Khan Tarin or simply Comrade Sultan Ahmed (a.k.a. name sometimes also given as ‘Sultan Muhammad Khan’ was an early Communist leader from the North-West Frontier Province of British India.
19 August 1906 – 9 August 1948 P. Krishna Pillai was a Communist revolutionary from Kerala, India, Kerala’s First Communist, Founder of the Communist movement in Kerala, and Poet.
13 June 1909-19 March 1998 Elamkulam Manakkal Sankaran Namboodiripad popularly EMS, was an Indian communist politician and theorist, who served as the first Chief Minister of Kerala state in 1957–59 and then again in 1967–69. As a member of the Communist Party of India (CPI), he became the first non-Indian National Congress chief minister in the Indian republic. In 1964, he led a faction of the CPI that broke away to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM). He completed his graduation from St.Thomas College, Thrissur. As chief minister, EMS pioneered radical land and educational reforms in Kerala, which helped it become the country’s leader in social indicators. It is largely due to his commitment and guidance that the CPM, of which he was Politburo member and general secretary for 14 years, has become such a domineering political force, playing a vital role in India’s new era of coalition politics.
February 25, 1912-July 3, 1976 K. Damodaran was a Marxist theoretician and writer and one of the founder leaders of the Communist Party in Kerala, India.
19 December 1904-6 April 1990 Bhalchandra Trimbak Ranadive popularly known as BTR was an Indian communist politician and trade union leader.
10 October 1899-22 May 1991 Shripad Amrit Dange was a founding member of the Communist Party of India (CPI) and a stalwart of Indian trade union movement. During the British Raj, Dange was arrested by the British authorities for communist and trade union activities and was jailed for an overall period of 13 years.
June 6, 1914-April 9, 1994 Chandra Rajeshwara Rao was an Indian freedom fighter. He was one of the leaders of the Telangana Rebellion (1946–1951). He also worked as Communist Party of India (CPI) general secretary for 28 years before giving up the job in 1992 for health reasons.
2 March 1926-12 July 2005 Padayatt Kesavapillai Vasudevan Nair popularly known as PKV, was the 9th Chief Minister of Kerala and a senior leader of the Communist Party of India (CPI). He became Chief Minister on 20 October 1978, following A. K. Antony’s resignation as Chief Minister to protest against the Indian National Congress choice of Indira Gandhi as a candidate in the Chikmagalur Lok Sabha bye lection. He gave up the coveted post on 7 October 1979, to facilitate the coming together of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) and CPI and pave the way for the formation of the Left Democratic Front. He was the founder-president of the Travancore Students Union, All Kerala Students Federation and All India Youth Federation (AIYF). He remained with the CPI after the split in the Communist movement in 1964 and was elected the party’s State secretary in 1982. He was elected to the Lok Sabha four times, in 1957, 1962, 1967 and 2004, and to the Kerala Legislative Assembly twice, in 1977 and 1980.
1925-1996 Guru Radha Kishan was an Indian Independence activist and Communist politician.
19 November 1919-25 August 1989 Sarjoo Pandey was an Indian politician, Indian independence activist and a leader of the Communist Party of India.
8 July 1914-17 January 2010 Jyotirindra Basu known as Jyoti Basu was an Indian politician belonging to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from West Bengal, India. He served as the Chief Minister of West Bengal state from 1977 to 2000. Basu was a member of the CPI(M) Politburo from the time of the party’s founding (The CPI(M) was formed at the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of India held in Calcutta from 31 October to 7 November 1964) in 1964 until 2008. From 2008 until his death in 2010 he remained a permanent invitee to the central committee of the party.
23 March 1916- August 2008 Harkishan Singh Surjeet was an Indian Communist politician from Punjab, who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from 1992 to 2005 and was a member of the party’s Political Bureau from 1964 to 2008.
13 January 1913-16 August 1991 Chelat Achutha Menon was the Chief Minister of Kerala state for two terms. The first term was from 1 November 1969 to 1 August 1970 and the second 4 October 1970 to 25 March 1977. He was instrumental in starting number of institutions and development projects in Kerala. Achutha Menon was the only politician who adorned the chief minister ship of Kerala for two consecutive terms. He led the then United Front to a thumping electoral victory in Kerala when Congress party was routed in elections in other parts of India.
7 February 1948 Prakash Karat is an Indian communist politician. He was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from 2005 to 2015.
25 March 1942 Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy is the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI). He was a member of the 12th and 14th Lok Sabha of India. He represented the Nalgonda constituency of Telangana.
18 September 1886–30 August 1976 Jadu Gopal Mukherjee was a Bengali Indian revolutionary who, as the successor of Jatindranath Mukherjee or Bagha Jatin, led the Jugantar members to recognize and accept Gandhi’s movement as the culmination of their own aspiration.
11 November 1888-22 February 1958 Maulana Sayyid Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin Ahmed bin Khairuddin AlHussaini Azad was an Indian scholar and the senior Muslim leader of the Indian National Congress during the Indian independence movement. Following India’s independence, he became the first Minister of Education in the Indian government. He is commonly remembered as Maulana Azad; the word Maulana is an honorific meaning ‘Our Master’, and he had adopted Azad (Free) as his pen name. His contribution to establishing the education foundation in India is recognized by celebrating his birthday as “National Education Day” across India.
4 November 1889-11 February 1942 Jamanlal Bajaj was an Indian industrialist, a philanthropist, and Indian independence fighter. He was also a close associate and follower of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi is known to have adopted him as his son. He founded the Bajaj Group of companies in 1926.The group now has 24 companies, including 6 listed companies. Besides Bajaj Auto Ltd, the other major companies in the group include Mukand Ltd, Bajaj Electricals Ltd and Bajaj Hindustan Ltd. One of his grandsons, Rahul Bajaj, runs the family flagship company, Bajaj Auto. Several institutions in India bears his name, including the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies. A locality, JB Nagar, in the sub-urban Andheri in Mumbai has been named after him. Jamnalal Bajaj Award was established in 1978 by the Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation and are given away each year on his birth anniversary.
1 April 1889 – 21 June 1940 Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar also known as Doctorji.He was the founding Sarsanghachalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Hedgewar founded the RSS in Nagpur in 1925, with the intention of promoting the concept of a united India rooted in Hinduism ideology. He drew upon influences from the Congress Party to start the RSS as a reaction to the Malabar riots.
3 December 1889-11 August 1908 Khudiram Bose. He was an Indian Bengali revolutionary, one of the youngest revolutionaries early in the revolutionary movement for Indian independence. On the day of his hanging, he was only 18 years, 8 months and 8 days old. He joined Anushilan Samiti, and came into contact with the network of Barindra Kumar Ghosh of Calcutta. He became a volunteer at the age of 15, and was arrested for distributing pamphlets against the British rule in India. At the young age of sixteen, Khudiram took part in planting bombs near police stations and targeted government officials. He was ultimately tried and hanged.
14 November 1889-27 May 1964 Jawaharlal Lal Nehru was the first Prime Minister of India and a central figure in Indian politics before and after independence. He emerged as the paramount leader of the Indian independence movement under the tutelage of Mahatma Gandhi and ruled India from its establishment as an independent nation in 1947 until his death in 1964. He is considered to be the architect of the modern Indian nation-state: a sovereign, socialist, secular, and democratic republic. He was also known as Pandit Nehru due to his roots with the Kashmiri Pandit community while many Indian children knew him as Chacha Nehru (Hindi, lit., “Uncle Nehru”).
14 April 1891-6 December 1956 Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar popularly known as Babasaheb, was an Indian jurist, economist, politician and social reformer who inspired the Dalit Buddhist movement and campaigned against social discrimination against Untouchables (Dalits), while also supporting the rights of women and labor. He was Independent India’s first law minister, the principal architect of the Constitution of India and a founding father of the Republic of India.
1803-7 February 1942 Sachindra Nath Sanyal was an Indian revolutionary and a founder of the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA, which after 1928 became the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association) that was created to carry out armed resistance against the British Empire in India. He was a mentor for revolutionaries like Chandrashekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh.
11 May 1895-17 February 1986 Jiddu Krishnamurti was a philosopher, speaker and writer. In his early life he was groomed to be the new World Teacher but later rejected this mantle and withdrew from the Theosophy organization behind it. His subject matter included psychological revolution, the nature of mind, meditation, inquiry, human relationships, and bringing about radical change in society. He constantly stressed the need for a revolution in the psyche of every human being and emphasized that such revolution cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political, or social.
23 January 1897-18 August 1945 Subhas Chandra Bose was an Indian nationalist whose defiant patriotism made him a hero in India, but whose attempt during World War II to rid India of British rule with the help of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan left a troubled legacy. The honorific Netaji (Hindustani: “Respected Leader”), first applied in early 1942 to Bose in Germany by the Indian soldiers of the Indische Legion and by the German and Indian officials in the Special Bureau for India in Berlin, was later used throughout India. Bose had been a leader of the younger, radical, wing of the Indian National Congress in the late 1920s and 1930s, rising to become Congress President in 1938 and 1939.However, he was ousted from Congress leadership positions in 1939 following differences with Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress high command. He was subsequently placed under house arrest by the British before escaping from India in 1940.
28 May 1883-26 February 1966 Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was an Indian pro-independence activist, lawyer, politician, poet, writer and playwright. He advocated the conversion of Muslims and Christians to Hinduism. Savarkar coined the term Hindutva (Hinduness) to create a collective “Hindu” identity as an essence of Bharat (India). His political philosophy had the elements of utilitarianism, rationalism and positivism, humanism and universalism, and realism. Savarkar was also an atheist and a staunch rationalist who disapproved of orthodox beliefs in all religions.
1899 “Mitra Mela” Established by V.D.Savarkar.
11 October 1902-8 October 1979 Jayaprakash Narayan popularly referred to as JP or Lok Nayak (Hindi for The People’s Leader), was an Indian independence activist, theorist and political leader, remembered especially for leading the mid-1970s opposition against Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, for whose overthrow he called a “total revolution”. His biography, Jayaprakash, was written by his nationalist friend and an eminent writer of Hindi literature, Ramavriksha Benipuri. In 1999, he was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award, in recognition of his social work. Other awards include the Magsaysay award for Public Service in 1965. The Patna airport is also named after him. The largest hospital run by the Delhi government and the teaching hospital of the famous Maulana Azad Medical College, Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Hospital, is also named after him. It was formerly called Irwin hospital. There is also a park in his name, situated on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, in New Delhi, just opposite to Maulana Azad Medical College. On August 1, 2015, the Chhapra-Delhi-Chhapra Weekly Express was renamed as “Loknayak Express” in his honor.
1902 Anushilan Samiti formed. It was a Bengali Indian organization that existed in the first quarter of the twentieth century, and propounded revolutionary violence as the means for ending British rule in India. The organization arose from a conglomeration of local youth groups and gyms (Akhra) in Bengal in 1902. It had two prominent if somewhat independent arms in East and West Bengal identified as Dhaka Anushilan Samiti centered in Dhaka and the Jugantar group (centered at Calcutta) respectively. From its foundation to its gradual dissolution during the 1930s, the Samiti challenged British rule in India by engaging in militant nationalism including bombings, assassinations, and politically-motivated violence. During its existence, the Samiti collaborated with other revolutionary organizations in India and abroad. It was led by nationalists such as Aurobindo Ghosh and his brother Barindra Ghosh, and influenced by philosophies as diverse as Hindu Shakta philosophy propounded by Bengali literaetuer Bankim and Vivekananda, Italian Nationalism, and Pan-Asianism of Kakuzo Okakura.
1906 Jugantar or Yugantar formed.It was one of the two main secret revolutionary trends operating in Bengal for Indian independence. This association, like Anushilan Samiti started in the guise of suburban fitness club. Several Jugantar members were arrested, hanged, or deported for life to the Cellular Jail in Andaman. Thanks to the amnesty after World War I, most of them were released and could give a new turn to their political career, mainly: (a) by joining Deshbandhu’s Swarajya or (b) the Communist Party of India; or (c) M. N. Roy’s Radical Democratic Party; or (d) later Subhas Chandra Bose’s Forward Bloc in the ’30’s.
1907 The Indian National Congress(INC) which was established in 1885 was divided into two groups (in the year 1907) mainly by extremists and moderates at the Surat Session of the Congress. The period 1885-1905 was known as the period of the moderates as moderates dominated the INC. These Moderates used petition, prayers, meetings, leaflets and pamphlets memorandum and delegations to present their demands. Moderates were not able to achieve notable goals other than the expansion of the legislative council by the Indian Council Act of 1892. This created dis-satisfaction among the people. In 1907 the INC meeting was to be held in Pune and the extremists wanted Lala Lajpat Rai or Bal Gangadhar Tilak as president. But moderates wanted Rash Behari Ghosh to be president. Gopal Krishna Gokhale changed the meeting place from Pune to Surat fearing that if Pune was to be held as meeting place then Tilak would become President. The partition of Bengal became the rise of extremism in INC.
1907-23 March 1931 Bhagat Singh was an Indian nationalist considered to be one of the most influential revolutionaries of the Indian independence movement. He is often referred to as Shaheed Bhagat Singh, the word “Shaheed” meaning “martyr” in a number of Indian languages. In December 1928, Bhagat Singh and an associate, Shivaram Rajguru, fatally shot a 21-year-old British police officer, John Saunders, in Lahore, British India, mistaking Saunders, who was still on probation, for the British police superintendent, James Scott, whom they had intended to assassinate. They believed Scott was responsible for the death of popular Indian nationalist leader Lala Lajpat Rai, by having ordered a lathi charge in which Rai was injured, and, two weeks after which, died of a heart attack. Saunders was felled by a single shot from Rajguru, a marksman. He was then shot several times by Singh, the postmortem report showing eight bullet wounds. Another associate of Singh, Chandra Shekhar Azad, shot dead an Indian police constable, Chanan Singh, who attempted to pursue Singh and Rajguru as they fled.
23 July 1906-27 February 1931 Chandra Shekhar Azad popularly known as Azad (“The Free”), was an Indian revolutionary who reorganized the Hindustan Republican Association under its new name of Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA) after the death of its founder, Ram Prasad Bismil, and three other prominent party leaders, Roshan Singh, Rajendra Nath Lahiri and Ashfaqulla Khan.
1 June 1897-19 December 1927 Ram Prasad Bismil was an Indian revolutionary who participated in Mainpuri conspiracy of 1918, and the Kakori conspiracy of 1925, and struggled against British imperialism. As well as being a freedom fighter, he was a patriotic poet and wrote in Hindi and Urdu using the pen names Ram, Agyat and Bismil. But, he became popular with the last name “Bismil” only. He was associated with Arya Samaj where he got inspiration from Satyarth Prakash, a book written by Swami Dayanand Saraswati. He also had a confidential connection with Lala Har Dayal through his guru Swami Somdev, a preacher of Arya Samaj. Bismil was one of the founding members of the revolutionary organization Hindustan Republican Association. Bhagat Singh praised him as a great poet-writer of Urdu and Hindi, who had also translated the books Catherine from English and Bolshevikon Ki Kartoot from Bengali.
15 May 1907-23 March 1931 Sukhdev Thapar was an Indian revolutionary. He was a senior member of Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. He was hanged on 23 March1931 at the age of 23.
22 October 1900-19 December 1927 Ashfaqulla Khan was a freedom fighter in Indian independence movement.
1913 The Ghadar Party formed.
1914 The Hindu German Consipiracy.
1915 The Ghadar Conspiracy.
1915 Provisional Government of India formed in Kabul.
1915 Gandhi returns to India.
1917 The Champaran Satyagraha of 1917, in the Champaran district of Bihar, India during the period of the British Raj, was the first Satyagraha movement inspired by Mohandas Gandhi and a major revolt in the Indian Independence Movement. Another important Satyagraha just after this revolt was Kheda Satyagraha. Champaran Satyagraha was the first to be started, but the word Satyagraha was used for the first time in Anti Rowlatt Act agitation. Champaran is a district which comes under the state Bihar. Under Colonial era laws, many tenant farmers were forced to grow some indigo on a portion of their land as a condition of their tenancy. This indigo was used to make dye. The Germans had invented a cheaper artificial dye so the demand for indigo fell. Some tenants paid more rent in return for being let off having to grow indigo. However, during the First World War the German dye ceased to be available and so indigo became profitable again. Thus many tenants were once again forced to grow it on a portion of their land- as was required by their lease. Naturally, this created much anger and resentment.
1918 The Kheda Satyagraha of 1918 in the Kheda district of Gujarat, India, during the period of the British Raj, was the third Satyagraha movement inspired by Mohandas Gandhi and was a major revolt in the Indian independence movement. It was the third Satyagraha movement after Champaran Satyagraha and the Ahmedabad mill strike. Gandhi organised this movement to support peasants of the Kheda district. People of Kheda were unable to pay the high taxes levied by the British due to crop failure and a plague epidemic.
31, August 1920-5 February 1922 The Non-Cooperation Movement was a significant phase of the Indian independence movement from British rule. It was led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi after the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. It aimed to resist British rule in India through nonviolent means,”Ahinsa”. Protesters would refuse to buy British goods, adopt the use of local handicrafts and picket liquor shops. The ideas of Ahinsa and nonviolence, and Gandhi’s ability to rally hundreds of thousands of common citizens towards the cause of Indian independence, were first seen on a large scale in this movement through the summer of 1920. Gandhi feared that the movement might lead to popular violence. The non-cooperation movement was launched on 31st August, 1920.
5 February 1922 The Chauri Chaura incident occurred at Chauri Chaura in the Gorakhpur district of the United Province, (modern Uttar Pradesh) in British India on 5 February 1922, when a large group of protesters, participating in the Non-cooperation movement, clashed with police, who opened fire. In retaliation the demonstrators attacked and set fire to a police station, killing all of its occupants. The incident led to the deaths of three civilians and 22 or 23 policemen. Mahatma Gandhi, who was strictly against violence, halted the Non-cooperation Movement on the national level on 12 February 1922, as a direct result of this incident.
1924 Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) was a revolutionary organization, also known as Hindustan Socialist Republican Army established in 1928 at Feroz Shah Kotla in New Delhi by Chandrasekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and others. Previously it was known as Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) whose written constitution and published manifesto titled ‘The Revolutionary’ were produced as evidence in the Kakori conspiracy case of 1925.
9 August 1925 The Kakori Conspiracy (or Kakori train robbery or Kakori Case) was a train robbery that took place between Kakori and, near Lucknow, during the Indian Independence Movement against the British Indian Government. The robbery was organized by the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA). The robbery was conceived by Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqullah Khan who belonged to the HRA, which later became the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. This organization was established to carry out revolutionary activities against the British Empire in India with the objective of achieving independence. Since the organization needed money for purchase of weaponry, Bismil and his party decided to plunder a train on one of the Northern Railway lines. The robbery plan was executed by Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Rajendra Lahiri, Chandrashekhar Azad, Sachindra Bakshi, Keshab Chakravarty, Manmathnath Gupta, Murari Lal Gupta (fake name of Murari Lal Khanna), Mukundi Lal (Mukundi Lal Gupta) and Banwari Lal. One passenger was killed unintentionally.
26 December 1925 The Communist Party of India (CPI) was formed.
1928 The Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928, in the state of Gujarat, India during the period of the British Raj, was a major episode of civil disobedience and revolt in the Indian Independence Movement. The movement was eventually led by Vallabhbhai Patel, and its success gave rise to Patel becoming one of the main leaders of the independence movement. The Satyagraha was ignited by a crisis. In 1925, the taluka of Bardoli in Gujarat suffered from floods and famine, causing crop production to suffer and leaving farmers facing great financial troubles. However, the government of the Bombay Presidency had raised the tax rate by 30% that year, and despite petitions from civic groups, refused to cancel the rise in the face of the calamities. The situation for the farmers was grave enough that they barely had enough property and crops to pay off the tax, let alone for feeding themselves afterwards.
1928 Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) was a revolutionary organization, also known as Hindustan Socialist Republican Army established in 1928 at Feroz Shah Kotla in New Delhi by Chandrasekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar and others. Previously it was known as Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) whose written constitution and published manifesto titled The Revolutionary were produced as evidence in the Kakori conspiracy case of 1925.
1929 Central Assembly Bombed by Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt.
19 December 1929 The Purna Swaraj declaration, or Declaration of the Independence of India, was promulgated by the Indian National Congress on 19 December 1929, resolving the Congress and Indian nationalists to fight for Purna Swaraj, or complete self-rule independent of the British Empire (literally in Sanskrit, purna, “complete, “self,” raj, “rule,” thus “complete self-rule”).
12 March 1930-6 April 1930 The Salt March, also known as the Dandi March and the Dandi Satyagraha, was an act of nonviolent civil disobedience in colonial India led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to produce salt from the seawater in the coastal village of Dandi (now in Gujarat), as was the practice of the local populace until British officials introduced taxation on salt production, deemed their sea-salt reclamation activities illegal, and then repeatedly used force to stop it. The 25-day march lasted from 12 March 1930 to 6 April 1930 as a direct action campaign of tax resistance and nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly. It gained worldwide attention which gave impetus to the Indian independence movement and started the nationwide Civil Disobedience Movement. Mahatma Gandhi started this march with 78 of his trusted volunteers. The march was over 240 miles. They walked for 24 days 10 miles a day.The march was the most significant organized challenge to British authority since the Non-cooperation movement of 1920–22, and directly followed the Purna Swaraj declaration of sovereignty and self-rule by the Indian National Congress on 26 January 1930.The flag of India had been hoisted by Gandhi on 31 December 1929, in Lahore, modern-day Pakistan. The Congress asked the people of India to observe 26 January as Independence Day. The flag of India was hoisted publicly across India by Congress volunteers, nationalists and the public.
23 March 1931 Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev Martyred.
24 September 1932 The Poona Pact refers to an agreement between B. R. Ambedkar and M. K. Gandhi on the reservation of electoral seats for the depressed classes in the legislature of British India government. It was made on the 24th of September 1932 at Yerwada Central Jail in Poona, India and was signed by Madan Mohan Malviya, Ambedkar and some other leaders as a means to end the fast that Gandhi was undertaking in jail as a protest against the decision by British Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald to give separate electorates to depressed classes for the election of members of provincial legislative assemblies in British India. They finally agreed upon 148 seats.
1939 The All India Forward Bloc (AIFB) is a left-wing nationalist political party in India. It emerged as a faction within the Indian National Congress in 1939, led by Subhas Chandra Bose. The party re-established as an independent political party after the independence of India. It has its main stronghold in West Bengal. The party’s current Secretary-General is Debabrata Biswas. Veteran Indian politicians Sarat Chandra Bose (brother of Subhas Chandra Bose) and Chitta Basu had been the stalwarts of the party in independent India.
August 1942 Indian National Army Established by Subhas Chandra Bose.
1943 Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind, the Provisional Government of Free India formed by Netaji.
1944 Subhas Chandra Bose calls Mahatma Gandhi as the Father of the Nation.
1946-51 The Telangana Rebellion was a peasant rebellion against the feudal lords of the Telangana region and, later, the princely state of Hyderabad, between 1946 and 1951.
18 February 1946 The Royal Indian Navy revolt (also called the Royal Indian Navy mutiny or Bombay mutiny) encompasses a total strike and subsequent revolt by Indian sailors of the Royal Indian Navy on board ship and shore establishments at Bombay (Mumbai) harbor on 18 February 1946. From the initial flashpoint in Bombay, the revolt spread and found support throughout British India, from Karachi to Calcutta, and ultimately came to involve over 10,000 sailors in 66 ships and shore establishments. The mutiny was repressed with force by British troops and Royal Navy warships. Total casualties were 8 dead and 33 wounded. Only the Communist Party supported the strikers; the Congress and the Muslim League condemned it.
16 August 1946 Direct Action Day (16 August 1946), also known as the Great Calcutta Killings, was a day of widespread communal rioting between Hindus and Muslims in the city of Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) in the Bengal province of British India. The day also marked the start of what is known as The Week of the Long Knives. The protest triggered massive riots in Calcutta. More than 4,000 people lost their lives and 100,000 residents were left homeless in Calcutta within 72 hours. This violence sparked off further religious riots in the surrounding regions of Noakhali, Bihar, United Provinces (modern Uttar Pradesh), Punjab, and the North Western Frontier Province. These events sowed the seeds for the eventual Partition of India.
14 August 1947 India Partitioned. Communal Violence.
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POST INDEPENDENCE IINDIA: A CHRONOLOGY
15th August 1947 India a free dominion within the British Commonwealth of Nations with king George VI as its head of state. The partition led to a population transfer of more than 10 million people between India and Pakistan and the death of about one million people. An estimated 3.5 million Hindus and Sikhs living in West Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Baluchistan, East Bengal and Sind migrated to India in fear of domination and suppression in Muslim Pakistan. Communal violence killed an estimated one million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, and gravely destabilized both dominions along their Punjab and Bengal boundaries, and the cities of Calcutta, Delhi and Lahore. The violence was stopped by early September owing to the co-operative efforts of both Indian and Pakistani leaders, and especially due to the efforts of Mohandas Gandhi, the leader of the Indian freedom struggle, who undertook a fast-unto-death in Calcutta and later in Delhi to calm people and emphasize peace despite the threat to his life. India received 82.5% of the total munitions, arms, and transport from the combined military of the Raj, and 70% of the manpower.
1947-48 Lord Mountbatten of Burma Governor General of India.
1948-50 Chakravarti Rajagopalachari Governor General of India.
30 January 1948 Mahatma Gandhi assassinated by Nathuram Godse.
December 1947 Junagadh. A plebiscite resulted in a 99% vote to merge with India, annulling the controversial accession to Pakistan, which was made by the Nawab against the wishes of the people of the state who were overwhelmingly Hindu and despite Junagadh not being contiguous with Pakistan.
1947-48 Indo-Pakistan War over Kashmir.
13-17 September 1948 Sardar Patel ordered the Indian army to depose the government of the Nizam, code named Operation Polo, after the failure of negotiations, which was done between 13–17 September 1948. It was incorporated as a state of India the next year.
1948 British India consisted of 17 provinces and 562 princely states. Telangana and other princely states were integrated in Indian union. Under the leadership of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the new Government of India employed political negotiations backed with the option (and, on several occasions, the use) of military action to ensure the primacy of the central government and of the Constitution then being drafted. Some of them were made Rajpramukh (governor) and Uprajpramukh (deputy governor) of the merged states. Many small princely states were merged to form viable administrative states such as Saurashra, PEPSU, Vindhya Pradesh and Madhya Bharat. Some princely states such as Tripura and Manipur acceded later in 1949.
1 January 1949 UN-sponsored cease-fire was agreed to in Kashmir.
1949 India recorded almost 1 million Hindu refugees into West Bengal and other states from East Pakistan, owing to communal violence, intimidation and repression from Muslim authorities.
26 January 1950 India became a Republic within Commonwealth of Nations, the first country to do so. Constitution of India formed. Constitution of India was drafted by a committee headed by B. R. Ambedkar. Rajendra Prasad became the first President of India.
1952 India held its first national elections under the Constitution in 1952, where a turnout of over 60% was recorded. Congress Party wins first general elections under leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru.
1953 Potti Sreeramulu’s fast-unto-death, and consequent death for the demand of an Andhra State in 1953 sparked a major re-shaping of the Indian Union. Nehru appointed the States Re-Organization Commission.
1955 Nationalization of Indian Insurance Sector. Establishment of LIC.
14 October 1956 Dr B.R Ambedkar converted to Buddhism along with 600,000 followers.
1956 States Reorganization Act was passed on the recommendations of the States Reorganization Commission. The separation of Kerala and the Telugu-speaking regions of Madras State enabled the creation of an exclusively Tamil-speaking state of Tamil Nadu.
1957 Elections in India. Congress under Nehru wins them.
1 May 1960 The states of Maharashtra and Gujarat were created out of the bilingual Bombay State.
1961 After continual petitions for a peaceful handover, India invaded and annexed the Portuguese colony of Goa on the west coast of India.
1962 India won Diu, Daman and Goa from Portuguese India.
1962 Sino-Indian War.
1962 Elections in India. Congress under Nehru wins them.
27 May 1964 Death of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Lal Bahadur Shastri succeeded him as Prime Minister.
6-23 September 1965 Indo-Pakistan War.
10 January 1966 Tashkent Agreement. Shastri died on the night after the signing ceremony. Indra Gandhi succeeded him.
1 November 1966 The larger Punjab state was divided into the smaller, Punjabi-speaking Punjab and Haryanvi-speaking Haryana states.
1966 Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi becomes Prime Minister.
1967 The Congress Party won a reduced majority in the elections owing to widespread disenchantment over rising prices of commodities, unemployment, economic stagnation and a food crisis. Indira Gandhi had started on a rocky note after agreeing to a devaluation of the rupee, which created much hardship for Indian businesses and consumers, and the import of wheat from the United States fell through due to political disputes.
The Naxalbari uprising started in Siliguri, West Bengal.
1969 Split in Congress. When Congress politicians attempted to oust Gandhi by suspending her Congress membership, Gandhi was empowered with a large exodus of Members of Parliament to her own Congress (R). The bastion of the Indian freedom struggle, the Indian National Congress, had split. Gandhi continued to govern with a slim majority.
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninst).
1971 Elections. Indira Gandhi and her Congress (R) were returned to power with a massively increased majority.
1971 Third war with Pakistan over creation of Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan.
Twenty-year treaty of friendship signed with Soviet Union.
Early 1970s India’s population passed the 500 million mark. Green Revolution started in India.
1974 India explodes first nuclear device in underground test in the desert of Rajasthan, near Pokhran.
1974 The Allahabad High Court found Indira Gandhi guilty of misusing government machinery for election purposes. Opposition parties conducted nationwide strikes and protests demanding her immediate resignation. Various political parties united under Jaya Prakash Narayan to resist what he termed Gandhi’s dictatorship. Leading strikes across India that paralyzed its economy and administration, Narayan even called for the Army to oust Gandhi.
1974 The Bihar Movement was a movement initiated by students in Bihar in 1974 and led by the veteran Gandhian socialist Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly known as JP, against misrule and corruption in the government of Bihar. It later turned against Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government in the central government. It was also called Sampoorna Kranti (Total Revolution Movement) and JP Movement.
1975 Gandhi advised President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed to declare a state of emergency under the constitution, which allowed the central government to assume sweeping powers to defend law and order in the nation. Explaining the breakdown of law and order and threat to national security as her primary reasons, Gandhi suspended many civil liberties and postponed elections at national and state levels. Non-Congress governments in Indian states were dismissed, and nearly 1,000 opposition political leaders and activists were imprisoned and a program of compulsory birth control introduced. Strikes and public protests were outlawed in all forms. Sanjay Gandhi, was accused of committing gross excesses – Sanjay was blamed for the Health Ministry carrying out forced vasectomies of men and sterilization of women as a part of the initiative to control population growth, and for the demolition of slums in Delhi near the Turkmen Gate, which left thousands of people dead and many more displaced.
1975-77 Indira Gandhi’s state of emergency.
Early 1975 In the Indian protectorate of Sikkim, a referendum was held that resulted in a vote to formally join India and depose the Chogyal.
26 April 1975 Sikkim formally became India’s 22nd state.
1976 The three words ‘socialist’, ‘secular’ and ‘integrity’ were added with the 42nd Constitution Amendment to the Indian Constitution.
1977 Indira Gandhi’s Congress Party called for general elections only to suffer a humiliating electoral defeat at the hands of the Janata Party, an amalgamation of opposition parties. Morarji Desai became the first non-Congress Prime Minister of India. The Desai administration established tribunals to investigate Emergency-era abuses, and Indira and Sanjay Gandhi were arrested after a report from the Shah Commission.
1977 Communist party of India comes into power in West Bengal.
1979 Janata Party Splits. Chaudhary Charan Singh becomes Prime Minister and formed an interim government.
1 January 1979 The Mandal Commission, or the Socially Backward Classes Commission (SEBC), was established in India on by the Janata Party government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai with a mandate to “identify the socially or educationally backward classes” of India.
January 1980 Indira Gandhi and her Congress Party splinter group, the Indian National Congress or simply “Congress”, were swept back into power with a large majority.
29 March 1982 Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao (28 May 1923-18 January 1996) entered politics when he founded the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) on 29 March 1982 in Hyderabad. He said that this decision was based on a historic need to rid Andhra Pradesh of the corrupt and inept rule of the Indian National Congress, which had governed the state since its formation in 1956 and whose leadership had changed the Chief Minister five times in five years.
1983 Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao 9-month old Telugu Desam Comes in to Power in Andhra Pradaish, marks a new Challenger post ‘Loknayak Jayprakash Narayan’ against Indira.
1983 The Mandal Commission Report completed.
1 June-8 June 1984 Troops storm Golden Temple – Sikhs’ most holy shrine (after Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale amasses weapons inside this Holy Shrine)- to flush out Sikh terrorist pressing for self-rule, called Operation Blue Star.
1984 “Anti-Sikh Riots 1984”. Official Indian government reports numbered about 2,800 killed across India, including 2,100 in Delhi. Independent sources estimate the number of deaths at about 8,000, including at least 3,000 in Delhi.
31 October 1984 Indira Gandhi assassinated by Sikh bodyguards, following which her son, Rajiv, takes over. Many Sikhs were killed due to the assassination of Indira Gandhi. see 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
1984 Elections. The election was won convincingly by the Indian National Congress of Rajiv Gandhi (son of Indira), who claimed 404 seats in a 533-seat parliament, the majority being 267. The Telugu Desam Party of N. T. Rama Rao, a regional political party from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, was the second largest party, winning 30 seats, thus achieving the distinction of becoming the first regional party to become a national opposition party.
December 1984 Gas leaked out at the Union Carbide pesticides plant in the central Indian city of Bhopal. Thousands were killed immediately, while many more subsequently died or were left disabled.
1987 The then-Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Farooq Abdullah (son of former Chief Minister Sheikh Abdullah) announced an alliance with the ruling Congress party for the elections of 1987. But, the elections were allegedly rigged in favor of him. This led to the rise of the armed Muslim insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir composed, in part, of those who unfairly lost elections.
1990s Around 90% of the Kashmiri Pandits left Kashmir during the 1990s, resulting in the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus.
1987-90 India deployed troops for peacekeeping operation in Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict.
1988 Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) was established by The Government of India on 12 April 1988 and given statutory powers in 1992 with SEBI Act 1992 being passed by the Indian Parliament.
1989 Falling public support leads to Congress defeat in general election.
National Front (India) Headed by V. P. Singh and led by Janata Dal formed and stormed into power with outside support from BJP and CPI.
1990 VP Singh withdrew troops from Sri Lanka.
1990 The V.P. Singh government declared its intent to implement the Mandal Commission Report in August 1990, leading to widespread student protests. It was thereafter provided a temporary stay order by the Supreme court. V.P Singh’s government fell over the issue as BJP withdrew support.
1990 Muslim separatist groups begin campaign of violence in Kashmir.
21 May 1991 While former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi campaigned in Tamil Nadu on behalf of Congress (Indira), a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) female suicide bomber assassinated him and many others, setting off the bomb in her belt by leaning forward while garlanding him.
1991 Elections. Congress (Indira) won 244 parliamentary seats and put together a coalition, returning to power under the leadership of P.V. Narasimha Rao. This Congress-led government, which served a full five-year term, initiated a gradual process of economic liberalization and reform, which has opened the Indian economy to global trade and investment. India’s domestic politics also took new shape, as traditional alignments by caste, creed, and ethnicity gave way to a plethora of small, regionally-based political parties.
Economic reform program begun by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.
1992 The Mandal Commission Report implemented in the Central Government.
6 December 1992 Babri Mosque in Ayodhya is demolished, triggering widespread Hindu-Muslim violence.
December 1992-January 1993 Bombay Riots. Around 900 people died. The riots were mainly due to escalations of hostilities after large scale protests by Muslims in reaction to the 1992 Babri Masjid Demolition by Hindu Karsevaks in Ayodhya.
1992 Over 200 people die in Cuttack in Odisha, after drinking illegally brewed liquor in the 1992 Odisha liquor deaths incident.
July 1995 West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu made the first call from Kolkata to inaugurate the cellular services in India.
May 1996 Elections. Congress suffers worst ever electoral defeat as BJP emerges as largest single party. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged from the May 1996 national elections as the single-largest party in the Lok Sabha but without enough strength to prove a majority on the floor of that Parliament. Under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the BJP coalition lasted in power 13 days. With all political parties wishing to avoid another round of elections, a 14-party coalition led by the Janata Dal emerged to form a government known as the United Front. A United Front government under former Chief Minister of Karnataka H.D. Deve Gowda lasted less than a year.
August 1996 The Amarnath Yatra tragedy in which at least 194 pilgrims are reported to have frozen to death in northern Kashmir after being stranded by violent rain and snow storms.
March 1997 The leader of the Congress Party withdrew support in from the United Front government. Inder Kumar Gujral replaced Deve Gowda as the consensus choice for Prime Minister of a 16-party United Front coalition.
November 1997 The Congress Party again withdrew support for the United Front.
February 1998 Elections. The BJP won the largest number of seats in Parliament (182), but this fell far short of a majority.
20 March 1998 The BJP forms coalition government under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
11 and 13 May 1998 The BJP government conducted a series of five underground nuclear weapons tests, known collectively as Pokhran-II — which caused Pakistan to conduct its own tests that same year. India’s nuclear tests prompted President of the United States Bill Clinton and Japan to impose economic sanctions on India pursuant to the 1994 Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act and led to widespread international condemnation.
February 1999 Vajpayee makes historic bus trip to Pakistan to meet Premier Nawaz Sharif and to sign bilateral Lahore peace declaration.
April 1999 The coalition government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fell apart.
May 1999 Tension in Kashmir leads to brief war with Pakistan-backed forces in the icy heights around Kargil in Indian-held Kashmir.
September 1999 Elections. BJP wins big.
October 1999 Soaring on popularity earned following the successful conclusion of the Kargil conflict, the National Democratic Alliance – a new coalition led by the BJP – gained a majority to form a government with Vajpayee as Prime Minister.
October 1999 Cyclone devastates eastern state of Odisha, leaving at least 10,000 dead.
January 2000 Massive earthquakes hit Gujarat state, killing at least 30,000.
March 2000 US President Bill Clinton makes a groundbreaking visit to improve ties.
May 2000 India marks the birth of its billionth citizen.
November 2000 States of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh & Uttaranchal (Uttrakhand) were created on 15 November 2000.
July 2001 Prime Minister Vajpayee met with Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf in the first summit between Pakistan and India in more than two years in the middle of 2001. But the meeting failed without a breakthrough or even a joint statement because of differences over Kashmir region.
July 2001 Vajpayee’s BJP party declines his offer to resign over a number of political scandals and the apparent failure of his talks with Pakistani President Musharraf.
September 2001 US lifts sanctions which it imposed against India and Pakistan after they staged nuclear tests in 1998.The move is seen as a reward for their support for the US-led anti-terror campaign.
December 2001 Suicide squad attacks parliament in New Delhi, killing several police. The five gunmen die in the assault. India imposes sanctions against Pakistan, to force it to take action against two Kashmir militant groups blamed for the suicide attack on parliament. Pakistan retaliates with similar sanctions, and bans the groups in January. India, Pakistan mass troops on common border amid mounting fears of a looming war.
February 2002 Inter-religious bloodshed breaks out after 59 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya are killed in a train fire in Godhra, Gujarat. More than 1,000 people, die in subsequent riots. (Police and officials blamed the fire on a Muslim mob; a 2005 government investigation said it was an accident, though later court and SIT report held Muslim mob responsible.)
July 2002 Retired scientist and architect of India’s missile program A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is elected president.
Through 2003 India’s speedy economic progress, political stability and a rejuvenated peace initiative with Pakistan increased the government’s popularity. India and Pakistan agreed to resume direct air links and to allow overflights, and a groundbreaking meeting was held between the Indian government and moderate Kashmir separatists. The Golden Quadrilateral project aimed to link India’s corners with a network of modern highways.
August 2003 At least 50 people are killed in two simultaneous bomb blasts in Bombay.
November 2003 India matches Pakistan’s declaration of a Kashmir ceasefire.
January 2004 Groundbreaking meeting is held between government and moderate Kashmir separatists.
January 2004 Prime Minister Vajpayee recommended early dissolution of the Lok Sabha and general elections.
May 2004 Elections. The Congress Party-led alliance won a surprise victory. Manmohan Singh became the Prime Minister. The Congress formed a coalition called the United Progressive Alliance with Socialist and regional parties, and enjoyed the outside support of India’s Communist parties. Manmohan Singh became the first Sikh and non-Hindu to hold India’s most powerful office. Singh continued economic liberalization, although the need for support from Indian Socialists and Communists forestalled further privatization for some time.
September 2004 India, along with Brazil, Germany and Japan, launches an application for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
November 2004 By the end of 2004, India began to withdraw some of its troops from Kashmir.
December 2004 Thousands are killed when tsunami, caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake off the Indonesian coast, devastate coastal communities in the south and in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
2004 The Naxalite conflict in its present form began after the formation of the CPI (Maoist), a rebel group composed of the PWG (People’s War Group) and the MCC (Maoist Communist Centre).
January 2005 Talks between the Andhra Pradesh state government and the CPI-Maoists broke down and the rebels accused authorities of not addressing their demands for a written truce, release of prisoners and redistribution of land. The ongoing conflict has taken place over a vast territory (around half of India’s 29 states) with hundreds of people being killed annually in clashes between the CPI-Maoists and the government every year since 2005.
July 2005 More than 1,000 people are killed in floods and landslides caused by monsoon rains in Mumbai (Bombay) and Maharashtra region.
By the middle 2005 The Srinagar–Muzaffarabad Bus service was inaugurated, the first in 60 years to operate between Indian-administered and Pakistani-administered Kashmiris.
8 October 2005 The 7.6 Mw Kashmir earthquake strikes with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe), leaving 86,000–87,351 people dead, 69,000–75,266 injured, and 2.8 million homeless.
February 2006 India’s largest-ever rural jobs scheme is launched, aimed at lifting around 60 million families out of poverty.
March 2006 US and India sign a nuclear agreement during a visit by US President George W Bush. The US gives India access to civilian nuclear technology while India agrees to greater scrutiny for its nuclear program. Later United States approved a controversial law allowing India to buy their nuclear reactors and fuel for the first time in 30 years.
May 2006 Suspected Islamic extremist militants killed 35 Hindus in the worst attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir for several months.
February 2007 India and Pakistan sign an agreement aimed at reducing the risk of accidental nuclear war.
18 February 2007 68 passengers, most of them Pakistanis, are killed by bomb blasts and a blaze on a train travelling from New Delhi to the Pakistani city of Lahore. (Samjhuta Express Bombing). As of 2011, nobody had been charged for the crime, though it has been linked to Abhinav Bharat, a shadowy Hindu fundamentalist group headed by a former Indian army officer.
March 2007 Maoist rebels in Chhattisgarh state kill more than 50 policemen in a dawn attack.
May 2007 Government announces its strongest economic growth figures for 20 years – 9.4% in the year to March.
May 2007 At least nine people are killed in a bomb explosion at the main mosque in Hyderabad. Several others are killed in subsequent rioting.
July 2007 India says the number of its people with HIV or AIDS is about half of earlier official tallies. Health ministry figures put the total at between 2 million and 3.1 million cases, compared with previous estimates of more than 5 million.
July 2007 Pratibha Patil becomes first woman to be elected president of India.
July 2008 Series of explosions kills 49 in Ahmedabad, in Gujarat state. The little-known terrorist group Indian Mujahideen claims responsibility.
July 2008 The United Progressive Alliance survived a vote of confidence brought after left-wing parties withdrew their support over the nuclear deal. After the vote, several left-wing and regional parties formed a new alliance to oppose the government, saying it had been tainted by corruption.
October 2008 Following approval by the US Congress, President George W Bush signs into law a nuclear deal with India, which ends a three-decade ban on US nuclear trade with Delhi.
November 2008 Nearly 200 people are killed and hundreds injured in a series of coordinated attacks by gunmen on the main tourist and business area of India’s financial capital Mumbai. India blames militants from Pakistan for the attacks and demands that Islamabad take strong action against those responsible.
December 2008 India announces “pause” in peace process with Pakistan. Indian cricket team cancels planned tour of Pakistan.
February 2009 India and Russia sign deals worth $700 million, according to which Moscow will supply Uranium to Delhi.
April 2009 Trial of sole surviving suspect Ajmal Kasab in Mumbai attacks begins.
May 2009 Resounding general election victory gives governing Congress-led alliance of PM Manmohan Singh an enhanced position in parliament, only 11 seats short of an absolute majority. United Progressive Alliance won a convincing and resounding 262 seats, with Congress alone winning 206 seats. However, the Congress-led government faced many allegations of corruption. Inflation rose to an all-time high, and the ever-increasing prices of food commodities caused widespread agitation.
July 2009 Delhi court decriminalizes gay sex, declaring the British Raj-era law, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, as unconstitutional.
February 2010 16 people are killed in a bomb explosion at German Bakery in the city of Pune, Maharashtra.
May 2010 Surviving gunman of 2008 Mumbai attacks is convicted of murder, possession of explosives and waging war.
May 2011 After 34 years of Left Front Government, Trinamool Congress and Congress alliance come to power in West Bengal.
July 2011 The number of Naxal-affected areas was reduced to (figure includes proposed addition of 20 districts) 83 districts across nine states. In December 2011, the national government reported that the number of Naxalite related deaths and injuries nationwide had gone down by nearly 50% from 2010 levels.
July 2012 Pranab Mukherjee, the former Finance Minister is elected as the 13th president of India.
November 2012 Ajmal Kasab the lone surviving gunman of 2008 Mumbai attacks is hanged on 21 November 2012 at 7:30 in at Yerwada Jail.
12 February 2012 Indian helicopter bribery scandal comes to light.
21 February 2012 Terror attacks in Hyderabad in Dilsukhnagar area.
2013 The Naxalite–Maoist insurgency gained international media attention after the attack in Darbha valley resulted in the deaths of around 24 Indian National Congress leaders including the former state minister Mahendra Karma and the Chhattisgarh Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel.
7 April-12 May in 2014 The 16th national general election saw a dramatic victory of the BJP; it gained an absolute majority and formed a government under the premiership of Narendra Modi, a BJP leader and till then the Chief Minister of Gujarat. The Modi government’s sweeping mandate and popularity helped the BJP win several State Assembly elections in India. The Modi government implemented several initiatives and campaigns to increase manufacturing and infrastructure — notably — Make in India, Digital India and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. The Hindutva movement advocating Hindu nationalism originated in the 1920s and has remained a strong political force in India. The major party of the religious right, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), since its foundation in 1980 won elections, and after a defeat in 2004 remained one of the leading forces against the coalition government of the Congress Party.
16 May 2014 Narendra Modi elected as prime minister of India, Congress was routed in the general elections.
2 June 2014 Telangana; the state of Telangana was officially formed on 2 June 2014.
2–5 January 2016 Terror Attacks on Pathankot Air Base.
27 June 2016 India becomes a member of Missile Technology Control Regime.
7 June2016 Unrest in Kashmir
23 September 2016 India signs a billion-dollar defense deal with France to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets.
8 November 2016 In a surprise announcement, the government withdraws high denomination notes from circulation causing chaotic scenes at banks across the country as customers try to exchange old notes.
30 June 2017 The Goods and Services Tax (GST) launched, the biggest tax reform in history of India.
